"PLAYING WITH FIRE"

How do you start a sex life after you have been raped? Not something that comes up at a lot of dinner parties, is it? Nor, for that matter, anything that gets discussed anywhere else.

It is another one of those “last taboo” subjects that is finally getting an airing. Not ‘THE’ last taboo. Every society for centuries to come is bound to discover new activities which it is hesitant to discuss front and centre. But this film, shooting now in London’s East End, can fairly claim to have one of the “latest” taboos at its centre and is bravely asking the big question.

How do you restart? Guess what? Not easily.

Here we have violently raped Katie, played by Essex’s Cara Seymour (Hotel Rwanda) getting back on the scene and, through a mate, played by Victoria Aiken, meeting a possible future love, Liverpool’s Scot Williams (Tulse Luper Suitcases/Lilies-BBC) who seems to understand and sympathise. See, in the main photo, him playing soft melodies. Her chilling out. Wow. A happy ending.

Alas, one by one the unsavoury secrets of his past emerge to put obstacles in the way of Katie’s recovery, let alone a deserved piece of happiness. The relationship is not necessarily doomed but there is certainly mucho work to be done if they are not to be drowned in the vortex of the lad’s murky past.

There is some good news for beleaguered Katie: leading man Jared Harris is on hand to play her psychiatrist.

The film is by writer/director Maeve Murphy whose 2004 first feature was the award winning Silent Grace, about female political prisoners in Ireland, another 'last taboo' issue. So she obviously knows something about women’s battles as well as unpopular subjects.

Filed August 1, 2007