Dir. John Crowley, Ireland, 2003, 105 mins
Cast:
Colin Farrell, Cillian Murphy, Kelly MacDonald, Shirley Henderson, Colm Meany
Ireland's cinematic output has pulled a few punches of late with the likes of Veronica Guerin, In America, Raggy Boy and now the black comedy Intermission. A cinematic debut for director John Crowley and writer Mark O'Rowe, the film has already scooped an award at the Galway Film Festival and has been picked to appear at Edinburgh and Toronto. However, the true winner in the film is not the convoluted plot, which could happen anywhere, but the beautifully crafted characters whose dreams and conceits are summed up in a few words of Irish street slang or a sip of Guinness.
What Crowley and Rowe have managed to successfully achieve is a genuinely funny film about people's misfortunes and lack of judgement. It's a waiting for the bus in the rain, greasy caff, soggy chips and warm beer kind of film. Whilst a certain amount of happy ending is inevitable, Intermission is not afraid to expose human weakness in all its glory. With various positive and negative final scenarios, it seems to be saying that we reap what we sow and we all find our own kind of happiness in the end no matter how perverse it may seem to others - it's-not-about-getting-there-but-the-journey kind of thing. The publicity material explains that life is about what happens in between, those little experiences and dilemmas we face that shape our future forever.
Intermission concerns a group of Dubliners whose lives separate and connect as they search for love, a future and the bus fare home. The characterisations are as strong and vivid as the landscape is bleak and uninviting. But it is this lack of glamour that is so refreshing and gives the film some of its most touching and brutal moments. In amongst the housing estates of hopelessness and the supermarkets of soul destruction our characters ride strong and high before teetering at the brink of oblivion.
This is a less self-conscious Snatch, with a great cast headed by Colin Farrell, hugely enjoyable in the role of a Dublin street thug, as we briefly saw him in Veronica Guerin, and clearly at home on an Irish set. It concerns John (Cillian Murphy) who ditches his girlfriend Deirdre (Kelly MacDonald) to test her love for him whilst his friend Oscar (David Wilmot) begins an affair with the wife of the man who has just shacked up with the dumped Deirdre. That's just one of the convolutions, but it makes for a good story and gives otherwise unconnected events a reason for existing within the film's framework.
To call it a true Irish film, as many critics have done in Ireland, is down to its characters who are given great depth and consideration by the understated cast, and that includes Farrell, who seems much more at home in a Dublin pub than an FBI interview room. It is a shame it was given an 18 certificate in the UK (it was awarded a 15PG in Ireland) and there is little to justify this.
Whilst this is another urban tale of real lives in a run down inner city á la Billy Elliot or The Full Monty, its originality is in the detail. It's not afraid to punch women, add brown sauce to its tea, defecate on someone or make fun of a girl's moustache. But what could be a dreadfully depressing story is saved by humour and characterisation. Colm Meany is the literally hard-hitting Detective Jerry Lynch who is so full of hatred for the criminals he calls "scum" he can only find respite in Clannad cds. His aggressive ego is fed when a TV director (Tomas O'Súilleábhain) sick of filming rabbit races, is persuaded to make a documentary about him. Detective Lynch becomes such a ridiculous cowboy figure meting out his own sense of justice that when the ambitious TV director becomes a pathetic victim of his bullying (and rewarded with a gift of one of his cds) the vain pursuit of love through notoriety is summed up perfectly in a few seconds. Abandoned wife Noeleen (Deirdre O'Kane) feeds her need to be wanted by starting an affair with the sexually starved Oscar. Scratching and beating him during love-making, her feelings of hurt and betrayal are far better conveyed by misguided throes of lust than with any words. When Oscar genuinely fails to notice Sally's (Shirley Henderson) much maligned - and obvious - moustache, the need to say "I love you" doesn't even come into the equation.
This is an understated gem, and its writer and director deserve great things.
Rebecca Kemp
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