Cal review – grieving Helen Mirren superb in compassionate Troubles romance

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Mirren won best actress at Cannes in 1984 for her role as Marcella, who forms a relationship with John Lynch’s Cal – a man complicit in her husband’s murder Pat O’Connor’s Northern Irish movie from 1984, adapted by author Bernard MacLaverty from his own novel, holds up very well for its rerelease; better in fact than most of the movies and TV drama made about and during the Troubles. It has an unhurried, thoughtful and very human quality; Helen Mirren won the best actress award at Cannes for her performance here and in fact it is very well acted across the board by a blue-chip cast. Mirren plays Marcella, a woman from a Catholic background, married across the sectarian divide to a reserve police officer murdered at his parents’ farmhouse by an IRA man who had bullied a bewildered local guy into being his getaway driver; this is Cal, played by the gauntly intense John Lynch. Cal lives with his widowed father; a gentle performance by Donal McCann, who was Gabriel Conroy in John Huston’...
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‘I thought I’d die at Armageddon’: Hollywood action hero Luke Evans on growing up gay as a Jehovah’s Witness

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The Welsh actor talks religion, rebelling and why he had to come out twice

• ‘I was bullied for being gay’: read an extract from Luke Evans’ memoir

At the age of 13, Luke Evans faced an impossible choice – either be true to himself and embrace his sexuality, or stay true to God. If he told his Jehovah’s Witness parents that he was gay, they would be honour-bound to inform the church elders, and that would be the end of life as he knew it. If he didn’t tell them, he would be forced into a world of deceit or denial. He chose God.

Evans became the youngest boy in his south Wales congregation to be baptised. He formally and publicly devoted his life to Jehovah. If he came out as gay now, he would be banished from the church. All upstanding members of the congregation, including his mother and father, would be expected to break off contact with him; to act as if he was dead or simply had never existed.

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