Tara Road (film)

Two women trade houses without ever having met. They're both looking for an escape from their problems, but by running away, both come to discover a great deal about themselves.

Ria Lynch is married to Danny Lynch and they have a daughter and a son. Danny begins spending less and less time at home with his wife and children. Ria believes another baby is the solution, and is shocked to find out that indeed her husband is going to be a father - but to a child from an affair he has been having. Her husband's unfaithfulness is the event that leads Ria into her decision to switch homes with a woman from the US called Marilyn who lost her teenage son to a motorcycle accident on his birthday. Marilyn is struggling to come to terms with her son's death and has become estranged from her husband (who had bought the motorbike as a birthday gift). She hopes her time in Dublin will cease her grief.

• Olivia Williams as Ria Lynch
• Andie MacDowell as Marilyn Vine
• Iain Glen as Danny Lynch, Ria's husband, who works at a property management company
• August Zirner as Greg Vine, Marilyn's English professor husband
• Stephen Rea as Colm Maguire, Ria's restaurateur friend
• Maria Doyle Kennedy as Rosemary Ryan, Ria's best friend
• Sarah Bolger as Annie Lynch, Ria's daughter, the older of her two offspring
• Johnny Brennan as Brian Lynch, Ria's son, the younger of her two offspring
• Eileen Colgan as Nora, Ria's mother
• Jean-Marc Barr as Andy Vine, Greg's Los Angeles residing brother
• Alan Devlin as Barney McCarthy, Danny's boss
• Brenda Fricker as Mona McCarthy, Barney's wife
• Ruby Wax as Carlotta, a flamboyant person who is one of Marilyn and Greg's neighbors
• Jia Francis as Heidi Franks, one of Marilyn and Greg's neighbors
• Maeve Binchy (cameo) as a restaurant patron[4][5]

Tara Road is the fourth Maeve Binchy novel to be adapted for film or television.[6] Binchy said she once swapped her house in London to stay in Sydney Austrialia, but that the story wasn't autobiographical "because nothing would be duller than reading about two happily married, settled couples, which is what we and they were" although the trip did inspire the story.[4] She praised the writers for condensing her 600 page novel into a 109 page script.[7] The filmmakers asked Binchy which location in Dublin she had been thinking of for Tara Road and she told them but the real location proved impractical and they instead found a different location like the one she had in mind.[4]

Filming took place in Cape Town, South Africa for three weeks for the scenes set in Connecticut.[7] Kenilworth Square area of Rathgar, Dublin, was as the location of titular Tara Road.[7] Caviston's deli and restaurant in Glasthule, Dublin was used for filming.[5]

The film premiered at the Savoy Cinema Dublin, September 29, 2005.[8][9]

Michael Dwyer of The Irish Times called it a "sketchy, conventional melodrama" and said the film "has the distinct whiff of a movie made for export, and it lacks the realistic grounding of the only earlier Binchy film, Circle of Friends (1995)." Dwyer was critical adaptation from the book, as the editing had left "gaps in the narrative and characterisation."[10][11] Padraic McKiernan of the Irish Independent was positive about MacDowell's star quality, but found the ending farcical.[12]

In 2007, producer Noel Pearson called the film a disappointment, saying "There was no chemistry there, and you could see that on the screen. It was one of those things that just disintegrated from day one. You never know what's going to happen."[13]

The film was released on DVD October 9, 2007.[14]

• The Holiday

• Tara Road at IMDb