The Plucked Rose Of Tralee

Dang right…

n the Ireland of today, it might look like a lost episode of Father Ted but there was a time when Housewife Of The Year ruled the waves on RTÉ.

Basically The Plucked Rose Of Tralee, this was all about celebrating the Irish mothers and wives who were a dab hand at keeping the house nice and tidy.

And hot meals on the table three times a day, of course.

Filmmaker Ciarán Cassidy clearly wasn’t just looking just for laughs with his eponymous documentary, speaking to former contestants in a competition that ran from 1969 to 1995, moving up quite a few gears when RTÉ began broadcasting it annually in 1982.

The ladies involved share our bewilderment at their acceptance of societal structures and recount their experiences of marriage, contraception, Magdalene institutions, financial vulnerability, marital breakdown and shame. It makes for a surprisingly warm and affectionate experience. And yep, there are laughs too.

We caught up with the Cassidy lad to find out how it all came together…

It would have been easy to go the Lovely Ladies route here – what was your initial goal when setting out to make Housewife Of The Year?
Yeah, it would have been easy to treat this as a Father Ted episode but we were very conscious from the very start that if we were just laughing all the way through, the whole thing would have fallen down. You’re trying to make a 90-minute film and it would be over after 5 or 6 if that was your attitude was. So, our goal was to show the world depicted on the TV and the reality at home. The distance between those two worlds was what fascinated us. The archive footage contrasted with those who took part and their real feelings about the contest, both good and bad.

Was there any reluctance on the former contestants you approached? They may have smelt a wind-up…
That’s very natural, as people didn’t know what the hell we were doing, and it’s a very surreal process. So, we’re sending out lots of letters in the post, asking them if they remembered the show they were on, and would you like to talk about it? The vast majority of people we spoke to were very trusting, and the idea that they were talking not only about being on TV but also personal stories about themselves, and they had no idea of how we were going to edit it all together. So, they were very trusting. Some others just didn’t want to go back and revisit their past, perhaps not sure of how it would come across now.

How important was it for you for the audience to respect these women coming forward to talk? And were these women happy with the film?
We were just really lucky with the cast that we got. We tried to find different people from different backgrounds, different parts of the country, different experiences, and spending time with these people, we quickly realised we had some amazing talkers, very funny. So, we just really respected them, and I think that shines through. It was all very natural. For example, Ellen, who had two very big stories in the doc – going to the Magdalene’s, and divorce – but we felt that these weren’t entirely representative of her. So, we also put in the really fun story of her going back to school. We tried to do that with each person we were dealing with; to get as close a representation as we could of who they were, and who they are.

And the women were all delighted with the film. All ten have been to all the screenings, and they love it. From Galway onwards, their response has been ecstatic. The audience reactions have thrilled them too, and how many people who really connected with their lives and their stories.

When it came to the final edit, was the tone firmly in your mind, or did it evolve through the cutting?
We always wanted to have this cross-section, where parts were really funny and parts were really sad, and parts were really surreal, and we wanted it to move at a very fast pace, with multiple characters. But it was really about how you line it up with the then and now, and the brighter stories balanced with the darker ones. That was the constant in the edit, finding the balance. To reflect the personalities of everyone involved was important too.

Great response here in Ireland – what are your hopes internationally?
The film premiered in Copenhagen, and it’s been around the world – America, Canada, Lithuania – and the response has been great. We’ve now got an agent dealing with the world market, and it’s been going great. The first international deal was for the Scandinavian market, and it’s going to be screening there soon. It’ll definitely have a life outside of Ireland. The show itself was pretty unique – we haven’t come across anything like it around the globe – but a lot of the issues involved are universal. So, we’re optimistic that it will translate internationally.

I’m guessing documentary was always the path for you. Good to get your first feature out there in 2019, with Jihad Jane, and does Housewife feel like a career leap forward…?
Documentary was always the path for me. I work in both audio and film, and it’s usually investigative. Housewife was a departure for me, something they refer to a pearl necklace of a doc, in that it doesn’t have a beginning and end, a big reveal, so it was different for me to do. An amazing experience though. Is it a career leap forward? Film is always really challenging, and quite brutal, a game of snakes and ladders. The fact that this has been so well received means that we can go forward and make something else now.

Can you tell us what’s next for Ciarán Cassidy…?
I’m just finishing off a series for the BBC, working with the Second Captains’ production company, looking at an IRA enforcer who was also a British double agent. So, I think we’re halfway through the run on that, and I should be finished the edit by the end of January. And then the company I co-founded with Colum McKeown, Little Wing Films, we’ve got nine features or series ready to go into production, and I have one feature that should be going into production early next year.

Screening on Thursday, February 6th in The Whale, you can grab your Housewife Of The Year tickets here, and find out more about Ciarán Cassidy here.