A Clever Woman

Sisters and performance artists Phoebe and Dot (Josie Lawrence and Tanya Myers) have returned to their family home on the Isle of Wight a year after the death of their composer mother. As they prepare the house for its sale, clearing decades of family clutter, they have started to work on a site-specific performance piece about their complex relationship with their mother and her serial infidelities; this incorporates her compositions for pianola and songs using the poems of Mary Coleridge, one of which, A Clever Woman, gives the film its title. Over one day, they – plus house-sitting musician Tom (James Northcote) and the sisters’ producer/curator Monica (Anna Mottram) – are forced to engage with the ghosts of the past and the void left behind.

Beguiling and free-spirited, Jon Sanders and Anna Mottram’s uplifting film explores family bonds and the process of mourning.