I had the delightful experience of watching director Jim Sheridan's latest film, In America on Friday night. The story is semi-autobiographical, and was written by Jim, and his two daughters. It follows the lives of an Irish family who illegally enter the USA to start a life in New York city in the 1980s. The parents, Johnny (Paddy Considine) and Sarah (Samantha Morton), and the two children, Christy (Sarah Bolger) and Ariel (Emma Bolger) are mourning the death of Frankie, their son and brother, from cancer. The undercurrent of grief, and how the individual members of the family handle it, is the theme of the movie. The film is narrated by the eldest daughter, Christy, who uses a camcorder to record, and review, her experiences.

With little money the family moves into a ghetto apartment which is full of racially diverse characters, most of whom are immigrants like them, and a number of whom are drug addicts. Johnny wants to become an actor, but is turned down for role after role on Broadway. Everyone seems to think that he lacks some essential emotional quality. Sarah gets work as a waitress, and the children explore the neighbourhood and are enrolled in a Catholic school.

This is a film that easily could have gone wrong because the focus is entirely upon the internal development of the characters, and the dynamic within the family. The acting is universally solid. Paddy Considine delivers a spot-on performance of a man struggling to keep his dreams alive, while keeping his family together and being unable to express his strangling grief. Samantha Morton portrays a mother who puts her children's need for security above her own need to mourn, and who puts her life in danger to have another child. The Bolger girls (sisters in real life) are nothing short of incredible in what are demanding roles of children who are trying to make sense of a world that is full of insecurity, death and decay. And Djimon Hounsou is excellent as Mateo, the downstairs neighbour who is an artist dying of AIDS, and whose own desire for life reminds the Irish family of the rich gifts they possess that have nothing to do with material possessions. Sheridan also makes New York city another character in the film by bringing its hustle, noise, humidity, tension, excitement and possibility into the film as a solid presence.

What's a particular joy for me is to watch an Irish film which is about Irish immigrants in New York that doesn't involve alcoholism or violence. It shows the Irish as being one of many immigrant races who have to start at the bottom in order to begin a life in America. The film is decidedly multi-racial in its vision of a country full of immigrants who are trying to escape their past, sometimes unsuccessfully, or are trying to build a new life upon big dreams and hope. It doesn't romanticise the experience, however, and the film shows that some people don't make it, and others don't want to, but that love and determination can certainly help.

This is Jim Sheridan in top form, and I bet once this film is released in the USA that it will be nominated for Oscars. It's got everything needed for the gold statuette: real emotional depth, fine acting, a strong theme, and a celebration of life.