Hall's dark comedy gives paws for thought

SMALL PRINT:YOU CAN'T always guess what a foreign audience will react to most in an Irish film. On Monday night at the Toronto International Film Festival, a full house gathered for Tom Hall's Sensation– a midlands farmer meets Kiwi call girl tale – and the post-movie Q&A quickly dealt with the scene that had drawn the biggest collective gasp: the drowning of two kittens.

It was not the first time Hall had been asked about the scene, and he explained his initial concerns about how much the audience would sympathise with the lead character (played by Domhnall Gleeson) after the early felinicide. He needn't have worried. The film played well, with the Canadian audience vocal throughout, having kicked off proceedings with a jolly "arrr" when the anti-piracy note popped up on screen. They then laughed and gasped their way through each twist in Sensation, although Hall claimed that it was only now that he realised people saw the film as as comedy – he had originally written it as a drama.

It had already been a good week for the film. It picked up a glowing review from Variety, which described it as a "hot, droll delight" with "stellar turns" by Gleeson and New Zealand actor Luanne Gordon. There has also been praise at the festival for Risteard O Domhnaill's Rossport documentary The Pipe, which Varietycalled "beautifully composed and valiantly photographed" thanks to "O Domhnaill's shooting, which ranges from action-thriller vérité to meditative and painterly".

In all, there are five Irish Film Board-funded films on the Toronto programme, the others being Oscar short-film nominee Juanita Wilson's first feature As If I Am Not There, and co-productions Lapland Odysseyand Essential Killing.