NOBODY PLAYS irascible curmudgeons with the flair, hauteur and perfect timing of Peter O'Toole, who is on sublime form - yet again - as the obstinate Horatio Fisk in Dean Spanley.

The setting is England in 1904, after one of Horatio's two sons has been killed in the Boer War and his heart-broken wife has died. He appears unmoved by this tragic double loss and is content to live in a world of his own, concentrating on such ephemera as demanding that his daily newspaper be re-ironed by his feisty but patient housekeeper (Judy Parfitt).

Horatio's surviving son, Henslow (Jeremy Northam), a publisher he addresses as Young Fisk, visits him every Thursday. Henslow, biting his tongue, tolerates his father's rebukes.

Horatio is particularly pedantic regarding the use of precise language, so it's all the more surprising when he neglects to correct Henslow's misuse of "presently". However, when Horatio has a brief verbal exchange with Wrather (Bryan Brown), a self-described facilitator, and Wrather comments, "You've given me great pleasure", Horatio bluntly responds that he must be easily pleased.

The Fisks meet Wrather and Anglican clergyman Dean Spanley (Sam Neill) when Henslow persuades his father to join him at a lecture on the transmigration of souls, now more commonly known as reincarnation. Intrigued by the dean, Henslow invites him to dinner, luring him with the promise of Spanley's favourite wine, the sweet Hungarian vintage, Imperial Tokay.

Deeply inhaling the wine's aroma, and then slowly swirling and swallowing, causes the dean to gurgle with giddy pleasure and to be transported into a reverie in which he talks about his past life as a dog. The consequences, which are replete with surprises, provide a pleasurable intoxication of their own in a delightful film that is impeccably performed.

Alan Sharp's elegantly shaped screenplay, which revels in its use of language, is loosely based on a novella by Edward Plunkett, who wrote under his title Lord Dunsany and died in Dublin in 1957. The scenario's ideas are as eccentric and playful as the humour that runs through them.

As it reaches revelations that achieve an unexpectedly touching pathos, the film echoes Dean Spanley's mantra: "Only the closed mind is certain."
Directed by Toa Fraser. Starring Jeremy Northan, Peter O'Toole, Sam Neill, Bryan Brown, Judy Parfitt, Art Malik
Gen cert, Cineworld/IMC Dun Laoighaire/ Screen/Vue, Dublin, 100 min, ****