Fri 11 Nov 2007How About YouHow About You is one of three recent movies dealing with people
spending the last years of their lives in residential homes, and
all three were made by directors much younger than their principal
characters: Away From Her (directed by Sarah Polley, 28), the
imminent The Savages from Tamara Jenkins (45), and this film by
Anthony Byrne, the 32-year-old Irish director of the stylised
musical, Short Order.Adapted by Jean Pasley from a Maeve Binchy short story (The
Hardcore), How About You is set at Christmastime, when only four
people remain in residence at Woodlands, a rural Irish home run by
Kate (Orla Brady). Vanessa Redgrave, who had a cameo in Short
Order, plays the feistiest of them, a professional singer and
dancer who married an Irishman and spouts expletives one would not
expect to find in a Binchy story.