Lack of spark from The Van

LAST Sunday was the single most high profile day for Irish film in the 49 year history of the Cannes Film Festival, with two Irish feature films having their world premieres in the official selection - The Van in competition and Some Mother's Son in the prestigious sidebar section, UnCertain Regard. At lunchtime on Sunday there was the unprecedented clash between the post screening discussion for one, Some Mother's Son and the Cannes press conference for the other, The Van, in the Festival Palais at exactly the same time.

The Van and Some Mother's Son are creative works set around two events which occurred 10 years apart and which, for entirely different reasons, engaged the hearts and minds of the Irish population more than most other events in the country's recent history.

The backdrop to The Van is the euphoric summer of Italia 90, when World Cup fever swept Ireland like never before. That wonderfully heady and goodhumoured atmosphere is recreated vividly in Stephen Frears's film of Roddy Doyle's novel which captures the impact of Italia 90 on the homes and pubs of Doyle's fictitious Barrytown. It deals specifically with two unemployed friends, Larry (Colm Meaney) and Bimbo (Donal O'Kelly), who have the foresight to see the event as an opportunity for private enterprise. They buy a grease caked and engine less chip van and position it outside the local pub for after match profits.

The third and last of Doyle's Barrytown novels to be filmed, The Van is characteristically littered with throwaway and inoffensive expletives and a great deal of humour that is simultaneously hilarious and cringe inducing is drawn by Larry and Bimbo's deplorable lack of hygiene standards in the van. At its roots, though, this is the most melancholy and philosophical film in the trilogy, and perhaps because it did not conform to expectations raised by the films of Doyle's The Commitments and The Snapper, it received a distinctly muted response at its Cannes press screening on Saturday night. It got a better reception, however, at its official world premiere the following night.

EXPECTATIONS based on previous achievements are notoriously difficult in obstacles to overcome its crucial early stages, The Van fails to match The Commitments and The Snapper in terms, of pacing and energy. An overbearing guitar driven score by Eric Clapton and Richard Hartley detracts from the mood of the movie. A few scenes misfire entirely, as when Larry and Bimbo tow the decrepit chip van to their estate. The whole neighbourhood exuberantly - and unconvincingly - forms a parade behind them, and the camera cuts not once, but three times, to a young girl performing cartwheels in front of the van.

When that initial awkwardness subsides, the film settles into its stride - boosted by extensive and resonant footage of George Hamilton's coverage of Italia 90 for RTE - and at its heart it is a warm and touching picture of two close male friends who are essentially innocents in a hard world, and the accumulating tensions which develop when they work together.

Colm Meaney, who has starred in all three movies based on the Barrytown trilogy, perfectly catches the inner vulnerability of the brash Larry, who thinks any woman who, rejects his chat up lines is a lesbian and who believes that a night of non stop pints in the pub is the solution to every, problem.

In his first full length feature film, Donal O'Kelly is wonderfully natural all the way from the opening scene, when he cries into his pint after being made redundant as a baker, although the quality of his performance will not surprise Irish audiences familiar with his remarkably versatile work in theatre.

Ger Ryan and Caroline Rothwell are solid in their supporting roles as the spouses of Bimbo and Larry, respectively, and a fine supporting cast most notably includes Neili and Ruadhri Conroy as Larry's older children and, in a spot on performance as a wily fixer, Brendan O'Carroll.

Margaret Thatcher, who would have looked encouragingly on the private enterprise spirit of Larry and Bimbo, features in the opening scene of Some Mother's Son - in television coverage of her 1979 election victory speech, which quoted St Francis of Assisi and began: "Where there is discord, may we bring harmony".

Directed by Terry George and produced by Jim Sheridan, who previously collaborated on the Oscar nominated screenplay for In the Name of the Father, the film is seen from the point of view of two women who have sons caught up in the hunger strikes of 1981. One of them, Annie Higgins (played by Fionnula Flanagan) comes from a rural, hard line Republican background and her son, Frank (David O'Hara) is a fugitive IRA member. But the focus of the film is on the other woman, a middle class teacher Kathleen Quigley (Helen Mirren) who has no idea that her son Gerard (Aidan Gillen), a university student, leads a secret life as an active IRA supporter.

She is firmly anti violence and spurns an offer of support from a Sinn Fein kingpin when her son is jailed in the Maze prison for killing a British soldier. Gerard is put in the same cell as Bobby Sands (played by John Lynch) who already is long haired and bearded and taking part in an on the blanket protest.

Some Mother's Son most effectively dramatises the subsequent events: the dirty protest, the hunger strike, the election of Sands as MP for Fermanagh South Tyrone and his death after 65 days on hunger strike. The film ends with the names of the 10 men who died on the hunger strike.

The linking fictional narrative is less compelling, and it is most problematic in the rather contrived relationship it forges between the two mothers. Despite the best efforts of Fionnuala Hanagan, her character, Annie Higgins, is largely set adrift, because there is little in the film of her relationship with her son.

The warm and close personal bond between Kathleen and Gerard Quigley is much more persuasively established and sustained, and it gains in credibility from the strong performances by Helen Mirren and Aidan Gillen. Most of the other characters are just ciphers, although Gerard McSorley is outstanding as the priest who makes a passionate plea for the IRA to call off the hunger strike.

The film is accompanied by an excellent Bill Whelan score, which inevitably recalls his work on Riverdance in a sequence which cuts between an Irish dancing class and an IRA mortar attack.

ROBERT Altman, whose film, Images, was screened as an Irish entry to Cannes in 1971, returned to the festival competition this year with Kansas City, which is set during the Depression, on the eve of an election in 1934. The film exhibits a strong sense of period detail and it features a terrific jazz score.

Unfortunately, though, the core, of the movie is a wearisome tale of a disturbed young woman (Jennifer Jason Leigh) who, for reasons best known to herself kidnaps a politician's wife (Miranda Richardson) in the hope of freeing her con man husband (Dermot Mulroney) from a notorious gangster (Harry Belafonte). Capable of arguably the most irritating performances in cinema today, Jennifer Jason Leigh capsizes the movie through her shrill, painfully mannered performance - a bizarre hybrid of Jean Harlow and James Cagney impersonations.

Much, much more satisfying is Patrice Leconte's splendid return to form with Ridicule, his first period picture. Set in the court of Louis XVI, this sumptuous production follows the serpentine route a concerned landowner (Charles Berling) has to take when he seeks permission to drain the fever infested waters of his estate. A cutting satire on hypocritical mores and absurd customs, Ridicule is jaggedly funny, splendidly played by a fine cast and dazzlingly photographed. It deserves to figure prominently when the Cannes prizes are handed out next Monday night.