Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Film myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.In her eighties, novelist Edna O’Brien — who died last year aged 93 — was awarded the status of “Saoi”, an Irish honour meaning “wise one”. Her wisdom was hard won, as shown by Sinéad O’Shea’s documentary Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story. It covers O’Brien’s life, beginning with rural childhood in County Clare and her emergence as a writer with her 1960 debut novel The Country Girls — a success that led to being demonised in Ireland for her sexual frankness and revolt against women’s repression.As well as ample archive footage, the film includes passages from O’Brien’s diaries, read by Jessie Buckley. These are extraordinarily candid, variously expressing euphoria, desperation, rage, fascination at the whirlwind changes of her life. Most alarming are the revelations about her fraught marriage with the writer Ernest Gébler who, increasingly resentful of her success, appears to have scrawled his own acrimonious comments in her diary.The film in turn offers an in-depth psychological portrait; a history of modern Ireland and its social attitudes; and a depiction of a time when literary success could bring head-spinning social glory. At the height of her fame, O’Brien was famous for her extravagant parties, and for hobnobbing with the likes of Judy Garland, Jane Fonda and Paul McCartney. We hear her accounts of a night with Robert Mitchum and of a long, painful liaison with a married British politician she dubs “Lochinvar”.Interviewed by O’Shea in the last two years of her life, O’Brien — fragile but austere and fearsomely clear-sighted — dismisses all this as a distraction from the important things in life, notably nature. With contributors including O’Brien’s sons Sasha and Carlo Gébler, actor Gabriel Byrne and writers Anne Enright and Walter Mosley, this is a moving, insightful tribute to O’Brien as a formidable writer and a woman of remarkable complexity.★★★★☆In UK cinemas from April 18
