A cock & bull story

THE PUBLICITY material for this extraordinary Irish film claims that test screenings "have left some audiences speechless". I'm not surprised. A kind of belated Celtic Tiger hunt, 8.5 Hoursfrequently attains levels of melodramatic absurdity that would shame the makers of a Peruvian soap opera.

Consider the sequence that finds the film’s key acquisitive bitch (Lynette Callaghan) – a blend of Alexis Colby and an angry weather system – viewing an expensive apartment with a stereotypically sleazy estate agent. Reluctant to accept her offer, he glances towards his gentleman’s area and suggests that some arrangement can be reached. No? She’s not getting down on her knees, is she? She is. This can’t be within the auctioneers and valuers’ code of practice.

Rachel, the desperate fellatrix, is one of four keyboard thumpers at an IT firm that, though apparently successful, forces its employees to work round the same cramped table in the same pokey room. One colleague (Victor Burke) is worried at the escalating cost of his upcoming wedding to a sketchily drawn, covetous flibbertygibbet. Another (Jonathan Byrne) is falling into a morass of coke- fuelled sex addiction.

The third (Art Kearns) has less to do with the new decadence – he represents old-school, golf-jumper Ireland – but still finds his marriage in a state of perilous decay. Over the space of one, insanely busy day, each character experiences many (too many) life-changing traumas.

If you were in a generous mood, you could note the intimations of looming economic disaster and mark 8.5 Hoursdown as a drama of the recession. But, in truth, the picture feels hopelessly out of date.

Wallowing in a credit-guzzling Dublin, in which property is the new religion, Brian Lally’s bizarre, casually transgressive script reads like a hand-wringing editorial on the evils afflicting Ireland at the turn of the century.

Lally is, of course, to be praised for getting his no-budget production into commercial cinemas, and it should be noted that the acting, though rarely restrained, is mostly up to scratch. No amount of goodwill can, however, distract from the broadness of the satire or the outrageousness of the increasingly deranged plotting.

Most remarkably, the final denouement manages to be both foreseeable and jaw-droppingly, eye-wateringly, stick-your-fist-in- your-gaping-mouth ridiculous. In other words, as the notes say, you’ll be left speechless.