Neil Jordan: Exploring Boundaries

Neil Jordan is unarguably Ireland’s most versatile, prolific and successful film director whose work, both in terms of his fiction writing, and film, has achieved international acclaim and recognition. Indeed, though he lives in Ireland, and through his work often engages with Irish subjects, he addresses at once more universal and more intimate themes such as the interrelation of private sexuality and politics or society, obsession and the nature of desire, and transformation and identity. Though he has worked across many genres, a defining feature has been a refusal of the realist mode. Even in his non-fantasy films, there is a palpable sense of the magical and supernatural. Above all, he creates sumptuous and sensuous worlds of synergy which, thematically and narratively layered, are open to multiple critical interpretations. The book, which is the first extensive study of the director in English, provides contextualised readings of each of his films.