Home > Chicago Movies > Movie Review > Movie review: 'Irina Palm'

3 stars (out of four)

“Irina Palm” is saddled with an odd title, an outlandish plot and an unlikely star—notorious rock maven Marianne Faithfull cast as a suburban frump.

But it turns out a success, tempering its farfetched scenario with enough restraint and believability to pass for a modest parable of modern manners. Faithfull plays a sad-eyed, sad-sack   British grandmother named Maggie gripped by a horrible crisis. Her young grandson is dying, she and his parents have already hocked just about everything to save him and the only hope is a medical breakthrough in Australia, free treatment if the family can come up with the hefty travel expenses.

She’s a widow who had married at a young age with no job skills and the affect of a likable loser. Even the catty gaggle of midlife women in her card-playing quartet scorn her as the neighborhood joke.

But the movie, directed by Sam Gabarski, takes a fantastic turn by diving into the seamy underbelly. Wandering around Soho, she notices a help-wanted ad for a hostess at a sex club, and during the job interview she learns the word is a euphemism. Her job involves only her hands, serving clients anonymously, so despite her matronly mien and unmistakable age, she makes good money and becomes a star in her tiny, disreputable firmament.

How she tries in vain to keep her job secret, how others react to it in time and how she slowly immerses herself into an environment where she’s initially a stranger in a strange land takes up the bulk of the movie. It ought to be tasteless and embarrassing, and yet Garbarski makes it anything but, delivering a gentle, folksy tale  in which even the seedy, hardened club owner (Miki Manojlovic)—who looks, sounds and leers like someone made for the sex business—emerges as a credible love interest and even a likable man.

There are some gingerly touching, sadly funny scenes involving Faithfull perched in her work chair, grimacing as she masters her new task, bringing her own tub of sanitary wipes, eventually adorning her sordid, grimy closet with a framed picture from home. (“Are you going to decorate the rest of my club?” the owner asks.)

The clash between vapid, middlebrow fastidiousness and hard reality gets a maximum workout, predictable at times. But Faithfull’s misty-eyed, soft-spoken persona is beautifully vulnerable and empathetic, providing genuine soul and set in striking opposition to Kevin Bishop’s explosive, hot-tempered portrayal of her loving, sanctimonious son.

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