Distant Voices, Still Lives

Freda Dowie - Mother
Pete Postlethwaite - Father
Angela Walsh - Eileen
Dean Williams - Tony
Lorraine Ashbourne - Maisie
Debi Jones - Micki

Distant Voices, Still Lives is director Terence Davies's semi-autobiographical look back at his working-class upbringing in post-war Liverpool. Told in flashback and divided into two parts, the film is a glimpse of a dysfunctional family and memories of a Catholic childhood in the 1940s. The story explores the abuse suffered by the mother (Freda Dowie) and her three children, daughters Eileen (Angela Walsh) and Maisie (Lorraine Ashbourne), and son Tony (Dean Williams) at the hands of tyrannical father (Pete Postlethwaite), who regularly beats his wife and daughter. The latter part of the film concentrates more on the adult lives of the three children after the death of their father, eventually they marry yet remain deeply affected by their childhood ordeals.