It’s been a long time since Irish storytellers first engaged with the vulgar hubris that accompanied the Celtic Tiger. Dermot Malone’s intriguing diptych could be seen as a reminder that the perilous delusions hung around for decades (and no doubt are still with us).
King Frankie tells two parallel stories set some 10 years apart. At the film’s present, Frankie Burke (Peter Coonan), a taxi driver, attends traditional commemorations for his father’s death. In a cute irony, we are here very much in the old Ireland: sombre gatherings in unostentatious surroundings. Frankie finds a more ancient peace swimming in the grey morning light of Dublin Bay.
A decade earlier, King Frankie, as he could then be styled, embraces the bubbling, noisy future at an unnecessarily elaborate birthday party for his young daughter. Malone, in his debut feature, looks to be leaning towards the opening sections of the first two Godfather features. A powerful businessman, during a celebration for his offspring, juggles affairs with circling associates. There are, however, hints that this particular Don is skirting catastrophe.
Working with the cinematographer Luke Jacobs and the editor Rob Hegarty, Malone finds complementary tones for the two sections. The present-day sequences are shadowy, muted and unhurried. The monied past is busy, bright and coked up. When not concerning himself with high-end bouncy castles and Alpine-sized cakes, Frankie negotiates the sort of guaranteed money-winning project that you just know is, in grim reality, going to bring the king’s castle crashing around his ears.
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The macho (not literal, thank heavens) todger-measuring breaks no new ground in the depiction of late-capitalist excess. No viewer plunged unprepared into the centre of the party scenes could be in any doubt that the film-makers sternly disapprove of what is going on. Conversely, there is a borderline-sentimental affection for the quieter Ireland in the bitter-sweet framing story. This is how we used to be.
A strong set of performances from a top-flight cast help close Malone’s deal. Coonan, part of the Love/Hate generation, works hard at creating two believable versions of the same troubled personality. The indomitable Owen Roe gets a welcome chance to speak William Blake’s The Tyger. Now, what significance could that particular beast have to this story?
King Frankie is in cinemas from Friday, October 11th
