RED ROSES AND PETROL American Directions

The seemingly incongruous title is a fitting one writer/director Tamar Simon Hoffs’ elegy about an Irish family’s scars, secrets and shared experiences contrarily recalled. Malcolm McDowell delivers a typically stellar, powerfully understated, performance.

The death of patriarch Enda Doyle, a respected, college librarian and poet, reunites a combustible Irish family. While waiting for their guests at the wake, the family-matriarch Moya, brooding eldest daughter Catherine, stuck in the middle Medbh and angry-at-the-world Johnny watch Enda’s videotaped memoirs, an experience that both opens new’ wounds and helps to heal old ones.

Well written and acted, alternately lyrical and profane, this is a touching, funny and ultimately cathartic film, simply yet beautifully crafted, about the inextricable bond of family.