Festival flavour

The 14th Dublin Film Festival opened on a sombre note last night with the world premiere of Cathal Black's new film, Love And Rage, his first since the moving John McGahern adaptation, Korea, which was the closing film at the Dublin festival four years ago. Set in the late 1890s, Brian Lynch's screenplay for Love And Rage is also rooted in a literary source, James Carney's The Playboy And The Yellow Lady, on which it is loosely based while the key male protagonist, James Lynchehaun served as an inspiration to Synge for The Play- boy Of The Western World.

As played by Daniel Craig in Love And Rage, Lynchehaun is a fiery, volatile and dangerous man whose single-mindedness is evident from the outset as he plays dirty in his determination to win a horse race on the shore of Achill Island. "Wild animal-looking" is how he is described by the English landowner, Agnes McDonnell (Greta Scacchi) when she first sets eyes on him and becomes drawn to his feral nature. The locals call her the Yellow Woman because, we're told, "they think she's made of gold".

The film explores the shifting axis of their relationship as he triggers the dismissal of her estate agent (Donal Donnelly) and sets himself up with a provisions store on her property. Running parallel to the professional relationship which forms between them is the sexual tension which builds with a simmering power, while in the background further tensions are threatening from the Irish Republican Brotherhood.

In addition to its attributed sources, Black's film inevitably recalls Lady Chatterly's Lover in its picture of a wealthy woman irresistibly drawn by the sexual allure of a seductive working-class man, and Joseph Losey's film of Robin Maugham's novel, The Servant, in its drama of class conflict in which the servant craftily gains control over his master.

This pivotal relationship of Love And Rage is firmly established and developed in the edgy chemistry Black elicits from Daniel Craig, most recently seen as Francis Bacon's lover in Love Is The Devil, and Greta Scacchi. Black effectively uses their relationship to reflect and comment on fraught relationships between the Irish and the English at the time, and with a nod to the present.

Unfortunately, the narrative development of the film was dissipated for me, for one, having read Black's notes on the film in the festival brochure which reveal key events which happen in the closing stages of the film, and which I would have preferred to have had revealed first on the screen.

Love And Rage also suffers from the oddly mannered performance of Stephen Dillane, who seems adrift and ill at ease as the doctor who doubles at times as the film's narrator. The film is distinctively lit in burnished tones by the Polish cinematographer, Slawomir Idziak, who worked on several Kieslowski films and, coincidentally, also lit the festival's closing film, The Last September.

That film is now set to be shown simultaneously on two screens at Virgin Cinemas on the closing night, April 25th. The festival had received complaints from season ticket holders that the opening and closing films appeared to be restricted to invited guests. In a change of programme, the Taviani brothers' Tu Ridi will be screened tomorrow at 8.55 p.m., switching places with the French film, In All Innocence, which will now be shown at 6.20 p.m. on Tuesday. Tonight's 6.20 screening of Jam has been cancelled.

The former lead singer of New Kids On The Block, Donnie Wahlberg, has joined the festival's guest list. Now an actor in his own right - like his brother, Boogie Nights star Mark Wahlberg - Donnie will attend tomorrow evening's screening of Southie, which is set in an Irish-American area of Boston. He will be joined by the film's director, John Shea, whose many acting roles included the American writer who disappeared in Chile in Missing, and by Shea's co-writer on the film, James Cummings. Festival guests in for this evening include actor Tom Hollander and writer Robert Farrar for Bedrooms and Hallways; director Lionel Mill for Us Boys; and Irish director Eoin Moore for his Berlin-made Break Even. Neil Jordan flies in from the Brighton set of his Graham Greene adaptation, The End of the Affair, to introduce his latest film, In Dreams, tomorrow night, and another guest tomorrow is Simon Shore with his British gay movie, Get Real.

The Canadian actor, writer and director, Don McKellar, who features in three festival films - Last Night, The Red Violin and eXistenZ - will introduce Monday night's screening of Last Night. Israeli director Ron Havillo will be present for the festival screenings of his six-hour epic documentary, Fragments*Jerusalem, on Tuesday and Wednesday, and actor Mehmet Kurtulus will attend Tuesday's screening of the German movie, Short Sharp Shock.

Belgian director Marion Hansel will attend Wednesday's screening of The Quarry, which stars Irish actor John Lynch. The two-time Oscar-winning lighting cameraman, Chris Menges, is due in Dublin for next Friday's screening of his latest film as a director, The Lost Son.

Irish director Martin Duffy will be in for the showing of his new US-made movie, The Bumblebee Flies Anyway on tomorrow week, and on the same day the English film-maker and composer, Mike Figgis, will give a master-class in directing.

As the Dublin festival reaches its halfway point next Wednesday, the Fresh Film Festival in Limerick gets underway and runs for three days. This festival for young people comprises the Irish Schools Video Competition and workshops on make-up, sound, and acting for the screen, along with screenings of three fine feature films: Gianni Amelio's The Stolen Children, Louis Malle's Au Revoir Les Enfants and Rob Reiner's Stand By Me. For further information call (061) 319555.