Down with the ascendancy

Adapted by John Banville from Elizabeth Bowen's novel, Deborah Warner's film of The Last September is set in 1920, in the dying days of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy known as the Ascendancy. Keeley Hawes plays the free-spirited Lois Farquar who lives on the Co Cork estate of her uncle (Michael Gambon) and his wife (Maggie Smith). As local nationalists up the ante in their conflict with the Black and Tans, they are visited by a couple (Lambert Wilson and Jane Birkin) who are down on their luck, and by a London socialite (Fiona Shaw). The film has a special benefit screening at Cinema World in Douglas, Cork tomorrow, with the director and many cast members present, and it opens at selected cinemas next Friday.