In NORA, the eponymous heroine is the real-life Nora Barnacle (Susan Lynch), lover and later wife of writer James Joyce (Ewan McGregor). The film is firmly anchored in the intensity of the passion of the two, explicitly expressed in bed and out of bed, with James’ unfounded jealously balanced by Nora’s earthly rootedness.
Their relationship is set against the backdrop of James’ writer friends such as Oliver St John Gogarty (‘The Bard is no snob’, he remarks at Nora’s job of chambermaid); another fuels his fear of Nora’s unfaithfulness; and his devoted brother Stanislaus (Peter McDonald). The context is also the struggle Joyce had publishing his controversial writings (especially Dubliners) and the film ends in 1914 as Ulysses – the landmark modernist novel that is set on the day in 1904 when he met Nora – is begun.