Dramedy. A frumpy, taken-for-granted Irish housewife leaves her ungrateful family and
bravely goes off to stop a war. (Screenplay and novel).

SYNOPSIS:

Charmaine’s life, in a lower-middle-class Irish suburb, revolves around her chores. She washes, irons, cleans, cooks and shops. Along with her neglectful husband, William (a mechanic with his own small business), Charmaine is raising four children, two at work, and two at high school. Their fifth and eldest boy is already a successful solicitor in London.

As families often do, this family has vastly underestimated the wife’s and mother’s role as provider, peacemaker and general facilitator of comfort. Charmaine has all-but become a figure of ridicule, and her needs are never appreciated or considered, let alone addressed. Her services are taken for granted, her intelligence is not respected, and her morals are considered quaint and out of date.

In January, 2003, when the second Iraq crisis materializes upon the family’s TV, (the family dines in front of the TV, where Charmaine waits upon them) it is universally assumed that Charmaine’s take on the complex international issues is superficial and naïve. A prisoner of her ironing board during long days home alone, Charmaine watches the BBC’s extended news articles on the war, particularly those involving Human Shields. She becomes impressed with the leader of an English contingent of Shields, Amanda Peterson.

During a shopping incident, Charmaine meets and gets to know a Human Shield

campaigner. When she announces to her family she intends to go to Iraq to become a Shield she is dismissed and laughed at. It is only when her husband, William, realizes she is actually serious, that an all-out campaign to prevent her leaving is launched.

Too little too late, the family is left behind as Charmaine out-maneuvers them and flies out to Iraq. What follows for Charmaine is the inevitable clash of idealism and harsh reality. But the same depth of character that allowed her to become a selfless homemaker and wife, a devoted mother, confidant and comforter to her children, to never complain nor let those under her care come to harm, is the very thing that sees this unassuming woman triumph and return home to a hero’s welcome.

CHARMAINE THE SHIELD