The Green Road

"It's like there's some secret…but there just isn't," says Rosaleen's daughter. There is a problem, though. Rosaleen's adult children, for the first time in years, are gathering for Christmas in west Clare, Ireland. Rosaleen can't be made happy, and her children are far from trying anymore, if they ever did. Their own lives, which vary so much they seem to inhabit different eras as well as different countries, need tending. Dan is fearfully navigating early 1990s New York's AIDS-devastated gay scene and has found a love he can't even admit to himself is real; Hanna's acting career, which never really took off, is floundering; Constance's health scare underlines the isolation she feels in her marriage; and Emmet, the most distant of them all in every way, is exhausted by Ireland's excesses when he leaves his aid work in Mali. The family's stuttering reunion is capped by a surprise move by Rosaleen that breaks the tension and forces the children to see their mother and her choices in a new light.