‘Whitetail’ review: Natasha O’Keeffe impresses in Nanouk Leopold’s haunting Irish drama

Dir/scr: Nanouk Leopold. Netherlands/Belgium/Ireland. 2025. 103mins

An Irishwoman is unable to move on from a tragic accident that occurred in her teens in Whitetail, the powerful new drama from Dutch director Nanouk Leopold. As in her previous features, such as It’s All So Quiet  (2013) and Wolfsbergen (2007), much of the drama happens between the lines; her characters aren’t very big talkers, or, at least not very communicative about their innermost feelings. Yet it’s hard to look away from the agony of this hardy woman of nature, played by Peaky Blinders star Natasha O’Keeffe. That performance, together with some striking cinematography, could help this arthouse drama travel following its Toronto premiere and berths in Chicago and Thessaloniki.

 Gives O’Keeffe a major showcase for her formidable talent 

British-born O’Keeffe, who has Irish parents, plays thirtysomething Jen, a no-nonsense ranger at a lush nature reserve in southern Ireland. She’s an almost comically hard worker who pays more attention to her job and the forest than to the local men who seem to be interested in her. Leopold, who also wrote the austere screenplay, opens the film with a prologue that contains the explanation for Jen’s stubborn behaviour. As a teenager, Jen (Abby Fitz) fooled around with her then-boyfriend Oscar (Seán Treacy) in the far end of the woods, and a terrible accident occurred that has left both of them scarred for life.

The drama really kicks off when the now grown-up Oscar (Aaron McCusker, Bohemian Rhapsody) returns to his parental home after the death of his mother. Having long managed to contain her grief, anger and hurt, Jen can’t really deal with the sudden arrival of the person with whom she shares a traumatic past. To make matters worse, Jen also has to deal with her widower father (Andrew Bennett, The Quiet Girl), who himself isn’t quite sure how to talk to his daughter about not only her adolescent trauma but about how he reacted to it — or failed to, in a sense. 

As in Leopold’s previous films, characters are not wont to explain why they do — or don’t do — certain things. Instead, audiences are invited to simply observe the characters’ behaviour and put together the pieces of the puzzle. It helps immensely to have actors that are a constant pleasure to watch, whether they are being nice or nasty.

O’Keeffe really is Leopold’s secret weapon here, as she delivers a complex and layered performance of an angry, determined woman in an unusual predicament. Very often, people are unable to move on even if they would like to. But Jen is a different kind of woman, afraid to let go of her traumatic past because it means losing a part of herself or admitting that she might have some degree of responsibility for the accident – a whole Pandora’s Box of unresolved issues that she’d rather not confront.  

As in her Dutch colleague Urszula Antoniak’s Ireland-set drama Nothing Personal  (2009), Leopold uses the Emerald Isle’s impressive natural landscapes as a key element to suggest something about her characters’ inner world. Cinematographer Frank van den Eeden’s work ensures that nature is present everywhere, yet never does it feel so overwhelming that it could not be dominated by hard-working, highly motivated people such as Jen.

It is of course significant that Jen became a ranger, thus keeping her within the very landscapes where her founding tragedy occurred and making her responsible for its upkeep and for avoiding the possibility that history might repeat itself. In a neat narrative sleight of hand, Leopold lets things come full circle in a devastatingly logical way, while giving O’Keeffe a major showcase for her formidable talent.