A Hand to Hold
All things come to an end, good and bad; as Patrick finally begins to fade, his long illness finally taking him, as his life ends so does his marriage to Moira, one final game of chess which he refuses to abandon until he has won even as his strength fades and she forces him to bed, hanging on until the very end, refusing to give up or admit defeat.
The coroner confirming that it is all over, the undertaker already waiting at the end of the road, Moira says her final goodbye, but Patrick is not willing to give up, a persistent shadow over Moira who has served a lifetime of wifely support and compromise which she no longer sees a reason to maintain even as her even as her late husband silently demands she continue her sacrifice for his benefit.
Starring Doctor Who’s Frances Barber as the admirably sanguine and soft-spoken Moira and The Northman’s Murray McArthur and the corpse of her ungrateful husband with Lisa O’Connor as their daughter Kathleen and Frank Bourke as the perplexed family doctor, A Hand to Hold is directed by Philip Clyde-Smith from a script by Eliza Power which crams a lifetime of devotion and resentment and its unholy aftermath into fifteen minutes, the world turning even as Patrick decays but still determined to continue feeding off his wife’s vitality.
An Irish comedy horror drama of tragedy and resilience, of grief and growing new limbs, A Hand to Hold becomes the least of Moira’s worries as Patrick persists in his refusal to move on with death and decomposition in good grace, neither Katherine Moran’s Satanic priestess nor Jimmy Tarbuck’s more traditional priest nor able to offer helpful intervention, forcing the stubborn and wily Moira to take it upon herself to rid herself of a husband who can’t let go.
A Hand to Hold has screened at FrightFest at the Glasgow Film Festival, the DeadCenter Film Festival and the Six Feet Under Horror Fest
