She has a good relationship with her immediate family, however it's apparent she is much closer to her photojournalist father, Alistair Macdonald (Brendan Gleeson), who through her life has taught her all she knows about the natural world.
At home one evening with her visiting good friend and fellow academic, Christina (Denise Gough), Helen receives a devastating phone call from her mother saying that her dad has collapsed on a work trip to London. The loss she feels is instantly profound and even though she has a good relationship with both her Mother (Lindsay Duncan) and Brother (Josh Dylan), who both live close by, she finds it hard to accept this big change in her life.
One evening, looking a old photos of her taken by her father, she remembers her fascination for small birds of prey. She then decides in the desperate need to fill the chasm left by her father and with the help of an old family friend, Stuart (Sam Spruell), who is a falconer, she makes the big decision to acquire a fully-grown but inexperienced goshawk. However, in embracing the training of this hunting bird, it leads to her becoming withdrawn from her work, friends and even family.
Mabel is the name given to her goshawk and from the moment we first see this magnificent bird of prey, it becomes the real star of the film - as we see her on Helen's arm walking through the dreamy spires of Cambridge, then eventually flying in the beautifully-filmed golden hours of the English countryside. All the humans are fairly solid, however Foy gives a consistently superb performance of a previously-organised woman whose life changes out of all proportion as she tries to deal with the abject grief that can come with the loss of a parent. The runtime of 1 hour 55 minutes felt about right for this straightforwardly-told adaptation.
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