A young father must overcome his fears when his newborn baby is born intersex in Katie McNeice’s powerful short film Lambing.
While we have all heard of the rather rare condition where some babies are born with both male and female genitalia, it is even rarer for it to be the main focus in film. According to some statistics that appeared on the screen before the end credits of Lambing rolled, between 0.05% and 1.7% of the population are born with intersex traits, with many of those subjected to surgery in order to conform to more “normal” binary stereotypes. Director Katie McNeice tackles the subject head-on with this rather moving and powerful 16-minute short film.
Set in Ireland, the short begins with a young couple David (Fiach Kunz) and Caoimhe (Johanna O’Brien) as they prepare for the immanent arrival of their baby. David is busy painting the walls of the baby’s room, whilst Caoimhe is excitedly talking to her bump. Upon giving birth, the nurse quickly takes the baby away from the new and confused parents. Following a meeting with a specialist, we find out that the baby was born with both male and female genitalia, and a further meeting with a group of specialists is required where they will decide on the best course of action – in other words, they will decide on which genitalia they will remove.
Whilst this discovery is obviously shocking to both parents, it is David who seems affected by it the most. He closes up, refuses to answer his wife’s calls whilst she waits in the hospital, and plays back memories in his head of himself being a young boy and getting scolded by his father, where he tells him to “stop acting like a girl and be a boy.” These repressed memories force him to visit his father, John (Pat Shortt), a farmer who keeps lambs.
Both Fiach Kunz and Johanna O’Brien do really well with the material, with both showing off a range of emotions throughout. We feel for them, and whilst, as the audience, we may not agree with how David deals with the situation, we can’t help but understand and feel for the character. Pat Shortt is also strong as David’s father. He may have been heavy-handed in the flashbacks, but he forces David to understand that having a child is the most important and rewarding moment of a man’s life.
Lambing, which was funded both by the IMDb Script to Screen Award and the Kildare ShortGrass Film Bursary looks and sounds professional throughout. The cinematography by Richard Kendrick is sublime, with warm tones in some scenes, and harsher colours in others, like the blues in the ambulance, and the reds in the lambing shed. The use of film grain also adds to the visual quality of Lambing. The score by Emer Kinsella also works well and is moving.
As well as directing, Katie McNeice also shows her skills as a talented screenwriter and editor; the scenes all flow nicely, and she uses some match shots to perfection, with a perfect example being the shot behind David as he is walking, then matched with a shot behind of a much younger David in a flashback.
In her early thirties, McNeice is someone we will definitely be looking out for in the future. Ireland may very well have a rising star in the filmmaking world.
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