1960's a crime family forbids their teenage daughter Lily from seeing her boyfriend. Framed for the theft of a painting, placed into corrections home and pregnant. She is convinced the baby is dead. Thirty years later discovers he's alive.
In the year of 1989, Lily O'Shea is living the high life as a highly successful art dealer with a list of infamous clients including the Calabrian Mafia when she decides to return to her roots to seek retribution from the crime syndicate family that had her incarcerated for years in a psychiatric clinic for killing her father. After a confrontation with her mother, one of the main catalysts for her years of suffering, Lily is overwhelmed as the ugly and violent memories of her childhood come flooding back. She soon spirals out of control putting her own life in danger not only from herself but from her murderous uncle and mother that together hold the key to her innocence in the crime that had her locked away for years. Lily's mind plays tricks and she finds it difficult to know what is real and what is fantasy. A Detective from her past helps her find the truth until a violent showdown with her mother and uncle and a fight for her life exposes the unexpected truth as the fire within rages.—Deuce Film Productions
Written by Corinne Sennitt & adapted for Petros Ktenas - Deuce Film Productions
©2018 Original Screenplay by Corinne Sennitt:2023 Adaption for Petros Ktenas - Deuce Film ProductionsPh: +61 431414669 AWG:10028
The year is 1989 when a woman Lily O'Shea a highly successful art dealer stares motionless into the flames of the raging fireburning down The Den before her.
As the flames dance in her eyes, we see the events that led her to this point in time. Lily is thirty-five and a highly sophisticatedwealthy art dealer when she returns to the town and the place where her childhood nightmare began. The Den Hotel is themonument for all her years of suffering after spending time in a Correctional Centre for delinquent girls and later committed toa psychiatric clinic for years.
Lily feels confident and in total control on her return, she is now highly sophisticated and wealthy in her own right with clientslike the Calabrian Mafia. She drives a red Ferrari and has the strong support of her lover and partner of her art dealing business.She knows she can deal with the self-interested, alcoholic and calculating mother Ruth O'Shea that now suddenly pretends tocare for her and whom she believes was the main facilitator that had her locked up for so many years with the assumption thatLily murdered her father, the head of a notorious inner city crime syndicate.
When Lily learns her mother is now living at The Den, controlling all of her father's business and still in cohorts with hermurderous uncle, she is determined to unravel the mystery concerning her incarceration years earlier. Her confusion of thedetails of those years have plagued her mind for what seems an eternity, the damage to her memory caused by the barbarictreatment she suffered in the psychiatric clinic she had been incarcerated in.
Lily's confidence soon takes an unexpected turn for the worst when she comes face to face with her murderous uncle. Shebegins to remember the horrific murders her uncle and father committed at The Den years earlier. Memory's that laid dormantfor what seemed an eternity suddenly flood back swamping her mind. Her uncle's face has her spiralling out of control as sheremembers him stomping on the head of her first love after causing a major car crash when she was only fifteen. Thesenightmares are even more enhanced when she meets up with a female detective that played a crucial part in the death of Lily'syoung school friend and of her father's murder.
The Detective lays doubt in Lily's mind when she finds new information on her father's murder and wants Lily to help find outmore. Lily knows the Detective is trying to get her own personal information on the suicide of her young sister and school friendof Lily. They both know The Den holds the secrets of the past. Lily sets out to break in to the hotel to source it.As Lily frequents The Den, the memories of her childhood heighten. She flashes back to 1969 and the height of the Vietnam warprotests. A fifteen-year-old school Lily falling in love with a twenty-one-year-old young man that is about to be conscripted toVietnam. The boy is unaware of her true age and that she is the daughter of a major crime family which soon destroys both oftheir lives in a sequence of events.
Forbidden to see each other the two lovers decide to run away but their attempt is soon thwarted as they are chased by herparent's thugs and involved in a major car crash leaving the girl to witness her uncle dragging her boyfriend out of the car andstomping on his head.
A decision by her mother and father is made and Lily wakes up in a home for young delinquents and the news that her boyfriendwas killed. The girl struggles against the violence and vicious discipline by a nasty correctional officer that takes advantage of hiscontrol over the young girls. Lily witnesses and experiences his brutality and cruelty and during this time. Her mother is the onlyvisitor she receives in the centre and when she discovers she is pregnant her mother's lack of compassion and refusal to take herhome leaves her emotionally devasted. Having grown up in the criminal world with no real love from her parents she finds theiractions intolerable and incapable of understanding their cruelty toward her.
Her mother is mostly concerned with her own unhappy existence of being married to a dangerous and cold hearted, brutal headof a crime syndicate that she fears will learn about her secret affair with his married brother. She is incapable of coming to termswith her lonely but wealthy life and finds solace by drowning her self-pity in alcohol. She is completely resentful toward herdaughter who she realises her husband has suspected is not his child but does not want a scandal so they decide the girl wouldbe better controlled in the correction centre to keep her from embarrassing the family anymore.
After being locked in a dark damp cell late in her pregnancy, Lily is finally brought home by her mother but against her father'swishes. An argument follows and Lily is rushed into childbirth. She devastated when the baby is taken away for adoption. Lily runs from the hospital back to The Den and confronts her father and mother about the whereabouts of her baby and in theheight of the argument she believes she kills her father.
Lily is committed to a psychiatric clinic where she suffers a series of shock treatments and a concoction of drugs that left herwith only fragments of memory of what put her there. Her mother's irregular visits during this period are infrequent and vagueleading Lily to become more agitated as she begins to piece her distorted life together.
The memories remain vague but on return to The Den in 1989 she begins to unravel a clearer picture of the events that tookplace in her childhood. Her hatred of her parents, especially her mother rise to unbearable heights especially knowing she stoleher baby and also works so closely with her uncle, the man that killed her young love. The memories of what took place in TheDen is overwhelming and she on occasion spirals out of control as she tries to cope with what is truth and fantasy.
The one truth she wants exposed is what happened to her baby boy but the horror of the violence she witnessed over the yearsthat often took place in the basement of The Den become more disturbing. The violence and murders she witnessed, theritualistic violence races through her head like a freight train. When she remembers the details of what led up to the suicide ofher school friend, the Detective and her combine enough evidence of her mother and uncles drug dealing to make them pay. Allthree women are linked to the horror of the past and as the present unravels a shocking turn of events in a showdown betweenLily her mother and uncle.
The end is an echo of the beginning and the consequences Lily experiences has another shocking twist.
