Treacle Jr

Directed by Jamie Thraves Starring Aidan Gillen, Riann Steele, Tom Fisher 82mins, club, IFI members

We don’t know the full details but Tom (Fisher) is a troubled soul. Why else would he walk out on his wife and young son in Birmingham, jump a train to London and cast his mobile phone into a lake? Seemingly determined to eradicate all traces of his old life, he cuts up his bankcards and hits the street with an undignified thud.

But if Tom was hoping to drop out of society, Aidan (Gillen) has other ideas. A cheery, motor-mouthed stalker, Aidan has the devotion of a stray puppy and the tenacity of a barnacle. There simply is no escape for Tom, who winds up back at his insistent, unwanted mate’s grotty digs. Here, Aidan’s mismatched, streetwise girlfriend Linda (Steele) scolds, scowls and doles out domestic abuse. Can the men’s precarious relationship survive such fractious living arrangements?

British pundits, understandably enough, failed to spot the inspiration behind Aidan Gillen's tremendously powerful turn in Treacle Jrwhen the film received its UK release earlier this month. But Irish audiences, particularly those drawn from a rock persuasion, will likely spot Gillen's uncanny impersonation of Master of the Universe Aidan Walsh some nanoseconds into the actor's performance.

Gillen's astute character study powers this grimy urban curio from director Jamie Thraves. A portrait of the dispossessed, wherein every surface promises scabies and silverfish, Treacle Jr's sub-kitchen-sink milieu is shot through with enough Beckettian humour to make us believe it's a dirty English cousin to Adam and Paul.

There is something, too, of Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch Drunk Love, in the details. Aidan occupies the same good-natured space allotted to John Candy in Planes, Trains and Automobiles, yet as he's stripped of the cutsey-pie excesses that define the contemporary buddy comedy, we're unsure if we want to hug him or hunt him for sport.

Thraves had to remortgage his house to get Treacle Jrmade. The low budget occasionally tells but the filmmaker's faith in the project always shines through.