The Arbor (2010) on Netflix
NR20101h 34mBiographyDocumentaryDrama
At eighteen, Andrea Dunbar wrote a play about the Bradford estate where she grew up. Thirty years on, her daughter Lorraine and other relatives tell their story in recorded interviews.
- Netflix3.1/5
- IMDb7.3/102,290 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes96%
Trailer
Plot summary
Andrea Dunbar was eighteen when she wrote The Arbor, a play drawn from her life on the Buttershaw Estate in Bradford. Three decades on, the account returns to Brafferton Arbor, the street where she lived and worked, and to Lorraine, her eldest daughter. Actors lip-synch to audio recordings of Lorraine and other relatives speaking about the years since, and scenes from Andrea's play are staged outdoors on the estate with a mix of actors and residents. Archive footage and material from Rita, Sue and Bob Too also appear. The project began as a study of how the street had changed and became a portrait of Andrea after conversations with Lorraine.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Arbor (2010)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Every interview in the film is a lip-sync. Clio Barnard took the real audio recordings of Andrea Dunbar's daughter Lorraine and other family members and had professional actors mouth the words in designed sets, a verbatim-theater technique she had already used on her 1998 short Random Acts of Intimacy.
- Barnard never set out to make a film about the playwright at all: she wanted to record the changes that had come to Brafferton Arbor, and the subject only turned into Andrea Dunbar after she spoke to Dunbar's eldest daughter.
