Dir. John Boorman, Ireland, 2006, 107 mins
Cast: Brendan Gleeson, Kim Cattrall, Sinéad Cusack, Briain Gleeson
Review by Carol Allen
The title is a reference to "The Celtic Tiger", the term used to describe the phenomenal economic boom Ireland experienced in the nineties, which transformed it from one of the poorest countries in Europe to one of the richest. One of the beneficiaries of the boom in Boorman's film is Liam O'Leary (Gleeson), an Irish property developer, who has pulled himself up on the tiger's tail from humble beginnings to a position of considerable wealth. His dream is to build a national stadium but a rival developer is also on the case and meanwhile, in what is now a receding market, Liam is pushing both his financial luck and himself towards a breakdown. His stress escalates, when he realises he is being stalked by a man, who is his double. Is this a hallucination, is this doppelganger a harbinger of his own death or will the double turn out to be only too real?
Boorman, who has made his home in Ireland for nearly thirty years, seems from this to be more than somewhat disenchanted with The Celtic Tiger. His view of how it has affected Irish society is both interesting and enlightening. One would have hoped it would have made life better for everyone and ironed out some of the differences between the haves and have nots but seen through Boorman's eyes it appears that things aren't that much different from when the English ruled Ireland and had all the goodies, except now the rich ones are Irish capitalists rather than English ones. The film also appears to confirm the stereotypical view that when things are rough, the Irish take refuge in the bottle. Dublin it seems now has its lads and ladettes spewing up in the gutter just like England, not to mention more than its fair share of homeless people.
Without giving too much away, the double turns out to be Liam's long lost and never known twin. Liam was adopted in Ireland, his twin in Leeds. The latter has not had anything like his brother's good fortune and he now wants to take over Liam's life. While the human story of the vengeful twin reflects the economic one, it doesn't come over with nearly as much clarity. Gleeson is very good in the dual roles and in the main makes it clear which twin is which. We don't though get to know nearly enough about the twin's life. He doesn't even have a name, being described in the cast list merely as "Double". Cattrall is very good as Liam's wife, who has been neglected in favour of his business life. She is far more subtly sexy than her "Sex and the City" persona, very elegant with an upper class Irish accent. Performances are all good, particularly Briain Gleeson, Gleeson's real life son, who plays Liam's disturbed teenage son in the film and Cusack as his sister, who reveals his true history to him in a powerfully dramatic scene. The story telling does, however, lose its way at times with the real theme of personal identity - "who am I? - getting rather obscured. The implicit criticism of Irish society and the way the story is resolved raises an interesting question though - is Boorman's love affair with Ireland at an end?
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