Shadows lengthen along the lawn. There's a sense of another time. Talk turns to the forgotten world which Elizabeth Bowen recreated in The Last September. Neil Jordan, in black tie for a gala screening, is dashing off to his house in Castletownbere, Co Cork before the ball proper gets under way and the midges come out. Shucks, and there we were planning to ask him out for a dance - a foxtrot maybe.
Also Rod Stoneman, chief executive of the Irish Film Board, is leaving to link up with his three boys Adam (11), Otto (6) and Finn (5) and his wife, Sue Clarke, who've been to see the Pokemon film. "Despite the valiant attempts of Bord Scannan na hEireann," he says with a knowing smile, "their heads are deep inside Pokemon culture with the rest of the globe." As for the film, which he has just seen, it's "an exquisite image of the end of the Anglo-Irish era," he says.
The celebrated director of the film, Deborah Warner, is enjoying the plaudits. "It matters very much to me that the film was birthed here," she says. Bowen, she believes, is "one of the greatest writers of the 20th century". The champagne flows as the guests enjoy the sun in the elegant grounds of Cork's Maryborough House and prepare for a night of revelry at a summer's eve ball.
Officialdom is represented by John Minihan, deputy lord mayor of Cork and chairman of the PDs. The evening is cohosted by the Edith Wilkins Hope Foundation, which helps children in need in the developing world. "The film is about a forgotten people in Irish society," says Minihan. "It's appropriate because, to a degree, it's what Edith is about, she's helping forgotten people too," he says about his long-time friend from their school days, Edith Wilkins.
Wilkins herself, with a foster family of 27 children, is home from Calcutta to raise money and awareness. She recalls playing hockey once upon a time against star-actor Fiona Shaw, a Corkonian who has returned home to enjoy the bash, here with her parents, Dr Denis and Mary Wilson. Wilkins was at Regina Mundi and Fiona was a student at Scoil Mhuire back in the 1970s. "She was Fifi Wilson then," she adds.
Another Cork man, Mick Hannigan, director of the Cork Film Festival, says the film "is a sumptuous piece. As Fiona said earlier, it's arresting and gratifying to hear the Cork accents." Local actors enjoying the event include Oonagh Montague - daughter of poet John Montague; Emily Nagle from Glanmire with her parents Austin and Pauline Nagle and Maeve Kearney, who has given up the stage for the moment and has gone back to college to study.