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JAMES & LUCIA

By Robert MULLAN

CANOE FILM - as SALES All rights

Drama - Pre-Production 2022

The compelling final chapter in the life of notorious literary icon, James Joyce, focussing on Joyce's relationship with his exceptionally talented daughter, a dancer whose declining mental health is making her future uncertain.

- Year of production
- 2022
- Genres
- Drama
- Countries
- UNITED KINGDOM
- Languages
- ENGLISH
- Director(s)
- Robert MULLAN
- Writer(s)
- Robert MULLAN
- Cast
- Aidan GILLEN, Alex PETTYFER, Alex KINGSTON, Tamzin MERCHANT, Sir Derek JACOBI, Eileen O'HIGGINS, Tcheky KARYO, Rhona MITRA, Minnie DRIVER, Harry MELLING, Cary ELWES
- Producer(s)
- Simon FAWCETT, Gabrielle WHYTE HART, Rupert HOLLIER
- Synopsis
- James & Lucia traces the final decade of James Joyce’s life, in particular, his many attempts at saving his beloved daughter Lucia from a lifetime of psychiatric incarceration. At first, he denies her mental decline and, instead, explains her eccentric and dangerous behaviour as simply her unique and idiosyncratic artistic personality; then he attempts to save her through forcing her into an unwanted marriage and, finally, despite still being in denial of her mental deterioration he turns to unconventional therapies like sea water injections.
  
  As all this takes place, her career as a dancer, illustrator and artist comes to a sad and untimely end. Amidst this personal family crisis, Joyce's sight is fading, despite numerous operations by the eminent surgeon Alfred Vogt in Zurich, so he struggles to complete his mammoth Finnegans Wake. Throughout James & Lucia, a wide range of characters catch our eye - most notably Samuel Beckett, assistant to Joyce and later the author of Waiting for Godot, but we also meet Carl Gustav Jung, one of the giants of modern psychiatry, as well as legendary opera singer John O’Sullivan and American art collector and bohemian, Peggy Guggenheim.