His & Hers is a film (obviously) which, by rights, should be as dull as dishwater, if dishwater is truly dull, which it sometimes is and sometimes isn’t.
His & Hers is a film (obviously) which, by rights, should be as dull as dishwater, if dishwater is truly dull, which it sometimes is and sometimes isn’t. (I saw the face of Jesus in dishwater once; that was quite cool.) It’s a documentary featuring a group of Irish women — 70, in total — talking individually about the men in their lives: their grandfathers, fathers, boyfriends, fiancés, husbands, sons and grandsons, and that is it. Nothing else happens at all.
Actually, once, we do see a rather elderly, white-haired woman exercising on her home fitness machine, which she had asked for as a birthday present from her husband, a request that was originally denied. ‘Ah, sure, you can walk around the table, said he,’ is how she puts it, laughingly. And yet? This is such a delicious and loving film it’s somehow utterly absorbing, extraordinarily touching, and not as dull as dishwater, on the days dishwater does not have Jesus in it. (This is most days, alas; I never saw Jesus again and, although I did once see Cilla Black on a piece of toast, it wasn’t nearly as exciting.)
This is the work of Ken Wardrop, a young Irish film-maker who, I think, loves his mum, and uses the following Irish proverb as the film’s tag line: ‘A man loves his girlfriend the most, his wife the best, but his mother the longest.’ Is this true, do we think? I hope so. I hope my children will love me the longest because, in my old age, I intend to be a burden to them, and massively interfere, and am hoping the love will last out for quite a while before they bang me in a home.
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