Holy Island review: A puzzle that never achieves a resolution

There is a lot of skill on display in this peculiar Irish feature by Robert Manson. Filmed largely in crisp monochrome, this avant-garde puzzler makes worthwhile use of such talented actors as Mark Doherty, Arthur Riordan and Jeanne Nicole Ní Áinle. Doherty gets to do shuffling untrustworthiness as a dodgy taxi driver. There is no one better than Riordan at stringing out a shaggy dog story. The charismatic Ní Áinle, currently to be seen in the TV series North Sea Connection, confirms her status as a rising star by ringing every drop of potential from a role marinated in enigma (as they all are). Casting agents take note.

But what is it all in aid of? Manson has constructed a film whose experiments too often run up against outré clichés every bit as familiar as those common to genre entertainment. A synopsis is scarcely possible, but we can say that David (Conor Madden) and Rosa (Ní Áinle) appear to be trapped on a windy part of the eastern seaboard. There is a ferry service, but bureaucratic difficulties hinder onward travel. There are whispers of the contemporary, but the coin-operated phone box and David’s personal papers are from another era.

Holy Island is often sharp and engaging but after a while the arthouse tropes grind you down. Much of it is not Michelangelo Antonioni. Some of it is not Federico Fellini. A late, ominous dream sequence certainly isn’t Ingmar Bergman. You hardly need to be told that identities are insecure — at one stage David seems to exchange personae with a younger version of himself (?) played by Dermot Murphy. I could not decide if the pet crow, owned by an apparent variation on Dickens’s Barnaby Rudge, was, when held in his companion’s arms, really meant to look quite so conspicuously stuffed (perhaps he’s just been trained to stay very, very still). Obviously mysterious playing cards play a role.

Just when it looks set to drive you mad, Holy Island finds new harmonies to close out the song. The incorporation of nostalgic colour footage hints at a memory play that was hitherto edging to break through the knobbly surface. One is almost tempted to go back to the start and make a second attempt to figure the whole thing out. That is some sort of guarded recommendation.