Pigs on film

If things had been different Elaine Cassidy could have been another soon-to-be unemployed Glenroe actor. "I had a choice to sign a contract for Glenroe, or to hold out. I had done five episodes but it wasn't what I wanted to do, so I waited and hoped for Felicia's Journey and I got it," she says.

Cassidy has been acting since she was 16, but it was her performance opposite Bob Hoskins in the film version of William Trevor's novel that brought the now 21-year-old actress to the attention of audiences and critics.

Last weekend she arrived in Berlin to promote the just-completed film version of Enda Walsh's play Disco Pigs, a twisted coming-of-age story that bills itself as "90 minutes you will never forget".

Since they were born in the same hospital on the same day, the boy and girl who call themselves Pig and Runt have developed a symbiotic, almost telepathic relationship, living next door to each other in Cork.

But as the two approach their 17th birthday, their self-contained relationship starts to show cracks. Pig begins to vent his sexual frustration and growing jealousy in increasingly unpredictable violent outbursts that Runt is unable to understand or control.

After its debut at the Dublin Fringe Festival in 1996, Enda Walsh's two-hander play went on to enjoy a successful run at the Edinburgh Festival, followed by a UK tour. Since then, the play has been translated into 12 languages. Last weekend saw the premiere of the film version as part of the Berlin Film Festival Panorama programme.

The play was adapted by Walsh for the screen, with turns from established Irish actors like Brian F. O'Byrne, Geraldine O'Rawe and cameos from Eoghan Harris and singer Gavin Friday.

Producer Ed Guiney, of Temple Films, raised the movie's £1.8 million budget from London-based Renaissance Films and the Irish Film Board.

The film marks the assured and confident debut of director Kirsten Sheridan. Though she didn't see the original play, she says the emotional nature of the script appealed to her from the moment it dropped through her door.

Sheridan studied film at the Dun Laoghaire College of Art and Design and is prepared for the inevitable questions about her father, director Jim Sheridan. "He has been a great encouragement all the way. Of course there is a shadow there, but I like it, it is a comfy shadow," she says. To get the accent down for playing Runt, Elaine Cassidy spent two months working undercover in a Cork bistro. In the end the special language that Runt and Pig use to communicate was as much of a challenge for Cassidy as the Cork accent.

"I found it really strange at first, but then I got into it and completely in love with it. I'm a complete sucker for love stories, but I don't like corny ones. This is different, it's dark and interesting and written totally from the heart," she says.

The original production of Disco Pigs was Cork-born Cillian Murphy's acting debut. His chance to preserve his performance on celluloid culminates in a soul-baring monologue where his character, Pig, confesses the frustrations and jealousy that are eating him up inside.

"We did that in just two or three takes, but it really breaks the rules of film-making to have a two- or three-minute monologue without a break," he says at a reception for the film at the Irish Embassy in Berlin last Friday evening.

Disco Pigs will be released in Ireland in September and, judging from the reaction in Berlin at the weekend, has the smell of a hit.