A low key opening and what, if there is any justice in the world,
will be a low key film, launched this year’s 11th Galway Film Fleadh
on Tuesday 6th July.
Agnes Browne, a truly deformed crossbreed
between ‘60’s "Paddy" Dublin and ‘80’s "Commitments " Dublin merely
managed to combine the worst elements of both and left the majority
of the audience reduced to counting continuity errors to amuse each
other with over the coming week.
The remaining Irish entries were
a mixed bag. Liam O’Mochain’s, The Book That Wrote Itself, an entertaining
but ultimately too cheap debut feature got drowned out by the Browne
premiere, while Roger Corman’s Concorde Anois Teo studio in Tully
decided to hold back on the soft core porn this year and, in a gesture
that some termed penance, delivered a world premiere and free children’s
screening of The White Pony, Brian Kelly’s follow up to last year’s
extremely successful A Very Lucky Leprechaun.
Des Bell’s Rotha Mor an tSaoil (The
Hard Road to Klondike) and Lionel Mill’s Us Boys got their outings
on Wednesday afternoon. Bell’s piece makes excellent use of archive
footage to tell the story if Irish labourer Mici McGowan who emigrated
to America in the 1880’s, and in doing so utilises a skilful understanding
of the relationship between sound and visuals.
Mill’s Us Boys, already seen at the
Dublin Film Festival, followed brothers Ernie and Stewart Morrow,
now in their ‘70’s, about their daily business in the Glens of Antrim
over a four year period. A highly entertaining and moving piece
of work, it nevertheless suffers from an over familiarity with the
format as a result of the plethora of inferior fly-on-the-wall docs
that we’ve been bombarded with of late. Wednesday evening also saw
the premiere of Walter Foote’s The Tavern, which featured a performance
and soundtrack by Tuam’s own Sawdoctors.
The Irish excitement on Thursday
night was provided by the arrival, fresh from L.A., of Gabriel Byrne
for a late night screening of The Usual Suspects, part of a tribute
programme that included Miller’s Crossing and Defence of the Realm
and culminated in a packed public interview on Sunday afternoon
where both his Mammy and Lelia Doolin made sure he didn’t bring
any L.A. pretensions home with him.
Sprinkled throughout the week were
varieties of that new mini-genre, the USA produced ‘Irish in the
States’ flick. Bill Muir’s Exiled, George Bazala’s Beyond the Pale
and Nelson Hume’s Sunburn, all entertaining in their own way, but
all equally straight to video fare.
Friday saw the Irish premiere of
Damian O’Donnell’s East is East, a deserving winner of the Fleadh’s
Best First Feature award which demonstrated the O’Donnell has lost
none of the quirky style which endeared ‘35-A-Side’ to so many.
Alternatively funny and touching, it’s the story of the trials and
tribulations of a Pakistani family and their English born mother’s
attempts to mediate between her patriarchal husband and her seven
children in 1970’s England and it opens in Dublin at the end of
August.
A strong Irish programme on Saturday
included John Carney and Tom Hall’s overly intense ‘Park’ , and
Eoin Moore’s first feature Break Even, a German co-production. Moore
is currently shooting his second feature, Connemara in said part
of the country at the moment.
Bob Quinn’s paean to Donal McCann,
‘It Must Be Done Right’, went down a treat with the local populace
and Nichola Bruce’s excellent adaptation of Timothy O’Grady and
Steve Pyke’s ‘I Could Read the Sky’, with a stunning performance
by writer Dermot Healy kept the pointy heads happy.
Sunday saw the world premiere of
Donal Haughey’s Books in the Blood which told the history of Kenny’s
book shop and art gallery, a second outing for Martin Duffy’s follow
up to The Boy from Mercury, The Bumblebee Flies Anyway, a gentle,
understated piece of work that makes a nice addition to the canon
of one of Irelands best and frequently ignored directors, Declan
Recks flawed but amusing Making Ends Meet (with a script by Damian
O’Donnell and Arnold Fanning) and the world premiere of Sinead O
Brien’s Luke, and affectionate and revealing portrait of Luke Kelly
produced by Noel Pearson.
The presence of many of his family
members and the bould Ronnie Drew et al added to the emotion of
the screening and served as a fitting cap to a week of respectable
Irish fare. A sound problem meant that I exited the closing film
prematurely. Felicia’s Journey, Atom Egoyan’s adaptation of the
William Trevor book, partly shot in Cork, seemed to divide those
who stayed for the problem to be sorted, with many deciding it was
an inferior piece to last years inspired The Sweet HereAfter, but
you can make your own minds up at the end of the month when the
film opens and Michael Dwyer interviews Egoyan in the IFI…
Nicky Fennel