Audiences savvy enough to partake of the rich palate of pictures offered in the 2021 IRISH FILM FESTIVAL will undoubtedly be left enthusing over the state of modern Irish film making.
The acting, design and direction are all grand, but it’s the writing that is clearly the foundation of these exuberant, moving and achingly funny films.
Your mum is having sex. Your mum is having unprotected sex. Your mum is having unprotected sex with a man half her age and who is still living with his mother. Your mum is pregnant to this boy. Your mum is being slut shamed on social media.
As a teenage school girl coping with her own timely issues, how is she to cope?
An unprotected shag after a boozy birthday celebration throws the already tumultuous relationship between a teenage girl, Allegra, and her 44-year-old single mother into fractious new ground when the mother, Pamela, becomes pregnant after a one-night-stand.
Bronagh Gallagher as Pamela and Lola Petticrew as Allegra play off the mother daughter conflict beautifully with the generational differences compounded by societal slurs. Slut shaming, mature age sex, and male abrogation to reproductive responsibility all come into the narrative sphere giving this feel-good, comedy-drama a great sense of gravity.
Created by a female-led team – Writer Tess McGowan, Director Shelly Love and Producer Louise Gallagher – incidents and themes echo off each other, creating a sense of discordant unity that is very much like life itself.
“With no hair and no boobies, will you still be a girl?” asks a pre pubescent niece to her Auntie Kate in THE BRIGHT SIDE, a glorious unsentimental journey through cancer treatment.
Kate McLoughlin is a kick arse stand up comedienne in Western Ireland, sharp tongued and heavily armoured against emotional onslaught, thanks to a bruising from a gobshite now deceased dad and distant mum now shacked up with a pussy whipped wimp.
World-weary Kate wants out and heaven hears her. Her morbid prayers are answered in the form of a breast cancer diagnosis. She attempts suicide after a lavish Last Supper of champagne and oysters but the dodgy shellfish put paid to selfish plan and to placate her brother and niece, begrudgingly agrees to undergo treatment.
Heavily armed with an artillery of attitude, an arsenal of cynicism and an ammunition belt packed with bullets of black humour, Kate gets off to a bad start with the four other women she encounters on the chemotherapy ward.
“This is a chemo ward not a comedy club!” snaps one of the patients who bridles at Kate’s celebrity status with ward staff.
Nevertheless, the trajectory of her treatment fosters unsolicited friendships, a camaraderie with a cohort of quite disparate women while simultaneously feeding her shtick with material.
Gemma-Leah Devereux is utterly stupendous as Kate, brazen, bold, brave and acerbic, profoundly funny, unflinchingly honest. Kate is the focus, but THE BRIGHT SIDE is the sum total of individual stories bound by taut subtlety and nuance, pulsating with humour, vitality, and suspense.
Directed by Ruth Meehan and written by Meehan and Jean Pasley, THE BRIGHT SIDE is an unsentimental, non schlock, anti schmaltzy journey of women dealing with breast cancer.
Hilariously comic and often very tender in its exploration of disease and disfigurement, sexuality and self-esteem, THE BRIGHT SIDE is a bright and shining coruscation.
“I’d rather shit on my hands and clap than work here” says Lauren in response to gossip targeted towards herself and her sister, Kelly, in WILDFIRE, Cathy Brady’s assured feature film debut.
Set in a small border town in Northern Ireland, WILDFIRE is the story of two sisters reunited after a long absence, their reconciliation and their resilience to face up to unresolved aspects of their past.
Kelly returns home just as suddenly and unexpectedly as she disappeared years ago. Lauren is at first relieved then rejects the recalcitrant sibling, before relenting and allowing her to stay and begin some sort of resolution and reconciliation of the past.
Nika McGuigan as Kelly and Nora-Jane Noone as Lauren are dazzling in their depiction of sisters linked not only by blood but experience and the indelible cosmic spirit of their mother on their psyche and their soul.
An added layer of poignancy is added by the knowledge that Nika died of cancer shortly after filming. She was posthumously awarded Best Film Actress at the 2021 IFTAs.
To be sure, there are male film makers also working in Ireland, making pretty good pictures, like writer director, Paddy Slattery’s BROKEN LAW.
Two brothers, neither alike in dignity, in fair Dublin where their scene is set, BROKEN LAW examines the sibling tectonics between Dave Connolly, a respected member of the Irish police force, the Garda Síochána, and his ex con brother, Joe.
Recently released from prison, Joe falls in with old felon acquaintances who talk him into participating in the unlawful liberation of cash from a financial institution.
In mordant serendipity, the hiest happens at the very time Dave is present at the bank and gives chase to the balaclava clad bagman who, on apprehension, he discovers to be Joe.
The loyalty to the law is tested when his ex-convict brother asks him for help.
To add to the dilemma, two other fronts of complication and conflict. Dave’s burgeoning relationship with the teller traumatised by the robbery and Joe’s vicious accomplices hell bent on repatriating with their ill gotten booty.
Tristan Heanue as Dave and Graeme Earley as Joe are in fine fettle as contrarily confederate frères and John Connors is menacing as the vicious Wallace, but it’s Gemma-Leah Devereux, (star of The Bright Side) as the traumatised teller who steals the show.
Dark and frothy as a pint of Guinness, BOYS FROM COUNTY HELL is a fresh take on the vampire movie from Northern Ireland.
As if you didn’t know, the author of the most famous fangster, Dracula, was an Irishman, Bram Stoker.
The local pub in the small town of Six Mile Hill, is called The Stoker and a local cairn that legend purports is the maker of the grave of ancient vampire, attracts aficionado of the Dracula industry. It’s an opportunity rife for opportunism and mates, Eugene and William, moonlight as fly by night tourist guides for the literary and folkloric minded tourists.
Not exactly Stonehenge, the local authorities are intent on bulldozing the cairn to make way for a free way that will bypass the town. Eugene’s dad owns the construction company employed to demolish the stone marker, a demolition that has many in the community demonising the company for robbing the town of some of its lifeblood.
Demonising is certainly wrought as the desecration of the grave unleashes the long interred tooth and talon terror, Abhartach, whose quest for blood seems unquenchable.
It’s Abhartach by the number, Abhartach by the score, as William is infected and Eugene and his dad must use their demolition skills against a supernatural entity.
Writers Chris Baugh and Brendan Mullin scare up the comedy more than the horror and that’s a welcome relief when so many lesser vampire flicks rely on the Count’s blood count rather than an irony rich narrative. Not that there are not some genuinely creepy moments and some nicely placed pathos.
But BOYS FROM COUNTY HELL is played mostly as a craic, a bit of Bram inspired blarney, a tongue in cheek fang in neck romp, with Louisa Harland a stand out as the pragmatic barmaid, Claire, a fearless vampire killer who keeps her cool when the boys from county hell seem to loosing theirs.
link to the festival trailer: https://bit.ly/IFFAU_40SecTrailer2021
www.irishfilmfestival.com.au
Richard Cotter
