INDIGESTIBLE

SHORT ORDER

Directed by Anthony Byrne. Starring Emma

de Caunes, Jack Dee, Vincent Fegan, Paschal Friel, Vanessa Redgrave, John Hurt 16 cert, Movies@Dundrum, Dublin; Slaney Plaza, Enniscorthy,

Co Wexford, 100 min

THERE is no question but that Short Order is the type of film we should be making in Ireland, not least because this determinedly odd beast, though essentially an extended exercise in pastiche, is quite unlike anything anybody from these shores has attempted before. The film doesn't really come off - none of the parallel stories is sufficiently gripping and no two mesh together in any satisfactory fashion - but it is good to know that such a singular entity is out there in our cinemas baffling paying punters.

Beginning with a nod towards the title sequence of Les Parapluies de Cherbourg and remaining in the universe of that Jacques Demy film throughout, Short Order revolves around the experiences of Fiona (Emma de Caunes), a chef at a restaurant named, in an allusion to Moby Dick, Ishmael's. As the film progresses - or, rather, flails about - we encounter another, older chef who makes a class of Osso Bucco from severed fingers; a food critic (Jack Dee) who risks being confused with a notorious evader of restaurant bills; and, elsewhere, various prostitutes, artists and socialites.

It is a measure of director Anthony Byrne's near-lunatic self- confidence that, having persuaded Vanessa Redgrave to play one of those smaller roles, he keeps his camera trained on the back of her head through much of her scene. One assumes that Byrne is seeking to remind us of a similar shot in Godard's Vivre sa Vie. Fair enough, but by that point even the most fervent cineaste will be so suffocated with allusions that he or she will have stopped caring.

To be fair, Short Order is certainly a notable logistic success. Filmed in Hamburg and Dublin, the film does an impressive job of recreating the poster-paint awnings and damp cobbled streets of Planet Demy on a minuscule budget.

But, the truth is that Byrne, whose short, Meeting Che Guevara & the Man from Maybury Hill, showed enormous promise, has failed to make a movie out of his postmodern folderols and brilliant visual embellishments. Short Order has a great deal to do with food and enjoys drawing analogies between edibles and this-and-that (often, faintly disgustingly, involving genitalia). It should, therefore, tolerate being described as a big, messy gumbo with too much of everything stirred into the stock. Donald Clarke