Irish films for all seasons

Irish film is in rude health, on the evidence of what was on the big screen at the 19th Galway Film Fleadh, writes Donald Clarke

The Galway Film Fleadh, which turned 19 this weekend, has distinguished itself from the other major Irish film festivals in a number of ways. It is more at home to the business end of things than rival events. It fights a little harder to secure new Irish features. And, taking place in deepest July, it usually welcomes the sun.

Well, this year's festival was, as ever, alive with gossip about deals and, yes, there were a number of first-class domestic films on show. Casting their eyes from the blotting-paper skies to the streaming streets, visiting guests - the distinguished American critic Kenneth Turan seemed to be at every film - might, however, have reasonably wondered whether they had accidentally landed in Vladivostok. Never mind. The Town Hall Theatre was there to offer shelter. And When Did You Last See Your Father?, a thoughtful version of Blake Morrison's influential memoir by Anand Tucker, was just one of several world premieres to grace the Fleadh's main venue.

Starring Colin Firth as the author and Jim Broadbent as his father, the picture, which focuses on the days leading up to the older man's death, deals in the same class of queasy confessional as the book and is, thus, often extremely uncomfortable to sit through. Broadbent is, however, to be praised for finding subtle ways to hint at the inherent decency of his occasionally mendacious, habitually adulterous character. Having previously directed Hillary and Jackie, the story of cellist Jacqueline Du Pré's decline, Tucker has already demonstrated an acute feel for English misery. Using bold colours that suggest three-strip Technicolor, he evocatively summons an older England of grey tea and thick jumpers in the picture's touching flashback sequences. It rained a lot in the film too.

The presence of so many new Irish features in the Fleadh confirms that we have moved on from the era when the emergence of any full-length domestic film would be regarded with awed disbelief. Thirty years ago Bob Quinn's Poitín, a tale of Connemara, demonstrated that it was possible to deliver powerful, distinctive cinema in the most unpropitious of economic circumstances. It was a pleasure to see the film, now fastidiously restored and granted a fresh score by Bill Whelan, sell out the Town Hall. Such was the demand, a second screening took place at the weekend.

The younger Irish film-makers whose work premiered at the Fleadh owe Quinn a debt. There were few obvious stylistic similarities between Poitínand Bitterness, a chaotic no-budget comedy from Brian Launders, but the dedication required to deliver such a project would, no doubt, have impressed the senior film-maker. Propelling Jerome Ennis's brash, nihilistic layabout around Dublin's northside, Kate McLoughlin's script appears to nod towards The Big Lebowskiand the TV series Curb Your Enthusiasmas it travels nowhere particular at no great pace. We encounter some good jokes and an abundance of profane charm along the way, but this rough piece - the dialogue occasionally inaudible - should probably best be viewed as a learning exercise.

By way of contrast, Marian Quinn's 32A, a coming-of-age tale from 1970s Dublin, featured a number of Irish artists at the top of their game. The dreamily nostalgic cinematography from PJ Dillon was particularly impressive and the performances from Orla Brady, Jared Harris and young Ailish McCarthy were all convincing. Quinn's script does feature a number of weary cliches - teenage girls teaching one another to kiss, a couple staring dreamily at the stars - but the picture has just about enough wit and energy behind it to sustain its tidy length. Quinn's picture, whose title refers to bras, not buses, also features her famous brother, Aidan Quinn. It did, on balance, deserve its award for best first feature.

If 32Ais aimed at a mainstream audience then Brendan Grant's Tonight is Cancelledmade no concessions in its lunge towards the arthouse crowd. Indeed the picture's set-up - a European film-maker wanders about the former Yugoslavia - is ominously similar to that of Jean-Luc Godard's recent, austerely cerebral Notre Musique.

Thankfully, the picture, which also calls to mind snatches of Abbas Kiarostami's work, is more reminiscent of the French master's earlier, more digestible films. Mark O'Halloran plays an Irish director preparing a film set during the war in Kosovo. Bubulina Lajçi and Edi Agagjyshi appear as the couple whose story inspired the project. Conversations drift into limbo. A puzzling tale, whose connection to the central plot is unclear, follows a soldier as he travels to meet a potential wife.

In less secure hands, Tonight is Cancelledmight have degenerated into the worst form of self-indulgent twaddle. As it happens, Grant, by keeping a loose hand on the tiller, allows the film to confidently progress in its own erratic directions. Even if you don't quite warm to the film, you can't deny that the director is at ease with the medium.

Saturday night was an important one for Mark O'Halloran. Tonight is Cancelledwas followed in the Town Hall by the first public screening in Ireland of Garage. Written by O'Halloran and directed by Lenny Abrahamson - the team behind the peerless Adam & Paul- the picture follows a simple-minded garage employee as he begins an inappropriate friendship with the teenage boy who has been hired to help him out at weekends.

Garage does not make quite as powerful an impact as did its illustrious predecessor, but, once again, it showcases the utterly singular vision of this odd film-making partnership. The casting of Pat Shortt as the hapless protagonist telegraphs the purposefully uneasy balance between comedy and tragedy that characterises the piece. Featuring great supporting performances from Tom Hickey and Andrew Bennett, captivatingly moist photography from Peter Robertson and a beautiful final shot of which Andrei Tarkovsky might have been proud, Garageconfirms O'Halloran and Abrahamson as the most exciting young film-makers we have.

IF THE SUCCESS OF Garagewas, to some extent, to be expected, the powerful impact of Tom Collins's terrific Kingscame as a delightfully welcome surprise. Collins, whose last film, Dead Long Enough, didn't quite come off, has taken Jimmy Murphy's play The Kings of the Kilburn High Roadand turned it into a disconcerting, disturbing urban epic. Making canny use of such offbeat London landmarks as the Trellick Tower, the film tells the tale of five middle-aged men, immigrants from an Irish-speaking part of the west, as they come to terms with the sudden death of the most charismatic of their gang. The use of the Irish language - the boys made an agreement to retain their native tongue when talking to one another - suggests the troubling way an entire generation of immigrants has, following the economic boom on this side of the Irish Sea, become strangers in two separate countries. The actors, such reliable figures as Colm Meaney, Brendan Conroy and Donal O'Kelly among them, are faultless in their aggressive vulnerability and, sloping about a London made ghostly by PJ Dillon's drifting camera, help lend the film the unsettling quality of a whisky nightmare.

"I feel we are bringing this film home," Collins said at the screening. "I can't say any more, because I am too emotional." His emotion was understandable. Kingsmay be the best Irish-language feature since Poitín.

Elsewhere, the festival hosted the usual busy array of special events and short-film programmes. Highlights of the latter included Jamie Hannigan's seductive The Beekeeper's Son, a beautifully photographed tale of loss and regeneration, and The Blaxorcist, an eye-wateringly brash combination of Blaxploitation and the macabre from Ed King, grand high commissioner of Irish horror. In Teeth, the winner of the award for best Irish short, John Kennedy and Ruairí O'Brien allowed Niall Toibin and Niall O'Brien to do very funny things in a boat. Ian Palmer's The McDonagh Pictures, winner of the best Irish short documentary, movingly explored the history of one Traveller family through still photographs.

It could be seen as mean-spirited to single out any one film as notably disappointing, but mention must, at least briefly, be made of the jaw-dropping entity that is Nicolas Roeg's Puffball. Roeg, director of Don't Look Nowand Walkabout, is, quite simply, one of the greatest film-makers England has produced. Fay Weldon, author of the source novel, is a writer of enormous wit and verve. Sadly, the film, in which a pregnant Kelly Reilly falls foul of deranged harpies in Monaghan, is puzzling in ways no sensible director - not even one as famously elliptical as Roeg - could possibly have intended. We'll leave it at that.

The closing film was far more fun. Seraphim Falls, an epic western pitting bereaved Liam Neeson against ruthless Pierce Brosnan, drags its antagonists through every climactic condition known to man or beast. Beginning in snowy highlands, it moves through sweeping plains to end on an endless desert with nothing to see for miles but Angelica Huston. The punters at the Fleadh may have known how the outlaws felt. As the weekend dawned, the clouds dispelled and the sun began sweeping across Eyre Square. I hope Kenneth Turan got to sit outside for a spell.