THE EYES HAVE it whenever Robert Carlyle needs to express despair or insecurity, as he did so eloquently in The Full Monty and Angela's Ashes. Those sad eyes speak volumes in Summer, revealing a life steeped in regrets and lost opportunities for Carlyle's character, Shaun.

We meet Shaun in the present, when he is the dedicated carer for his best friend since childhood, Daz (Steve Evets), a terminally ill paraplegic. We get to know both men as time runs out for Daz, and in flashbacks to their childhood when their close bond was formed, and to the summer when they were 16 and life seemed to offer more hope.

The casting of the actors who play Shaun and Daz, and of Shaun's teen sweetheart, in all three periods is remarkably astute and essential to its credibility.

The setting is the British East Midlands, an area that is the forbidding location for the movies of Shane Meadows. The picture drawn by Summer director Kenny Glenaan and screenwriter Hugh Ellis is just as grim. There are no visible father figures for the adolescent Shaun and Daz. Shaun's frustrations are fuelled by his acute dyslexia, depicted in scenes that address the failure of the educational establishment to help him in a less understanding era.

The mood is melancholy as the film reveals the mixed fortunes of the three principal characters, to the accompaniment of an aptly low-key score by Stephen McKeon.

Some of the accents render the dialogue indecipherable at times, although that doesn't detract significantly from a drama powered by visually expressive performances. And there's no mistaking the expletives that litter the screenplay, even when the key characters are portrayed as children.

Directed by Kenny Glenaan. Starring Robert Carlyle, Steve Evets, Rachael Blake, Michael Socha. Club, IFI Dublin, 82 min ***