From a portrait of political activist Bernadette McAliskey to contrasting portrayals of post-Celtic Tiger Ireland, the varied Galway Film Fleadh continues to flourish, writes DONALD CLARKE
FAVOURITE MOMENT of my jaunts to the Galway Film Fleadh? Lelia Doolan and Bernadette McAliskey ambling on stage for the premiere of Doolan’s documentary on the indomitable political activist. Both acknowledged that, when two such strong people get together, a certain degree of (ahem) creative tension is bound to result. “We’re still talking,” they said. The mind boggles.
Bernadette: Notes on a Political Journeyproved to be a cracking piece of work. Weaving yards of terrific archive footage around recent interviews with the subject, the film reminds us what an articulate, clever and – easy to forget – funny woman McAliskey is. "I was smoking 30 cigarettes a day at the time, so tear gas meant nothing to me," she said in relation to certain misunderstandings in Derry.
Doolan balances the personal with the political in a film that gradually constructs an impressively rounded portrait. There’s plenty of controlled anger, but much poignancy too.
Doolan (currently credited as “sounding board”) has long been a stalwart of this event. She will, no doubt, have been happy to see that – while great institutions such as the Edinburgh International Film Festival flounder – the Fleadh, now in its 23rd edition, continues to draw in the punters.
The Fleadh is particularly noted for its focus on new Irish films. This year's do featured Irish premieres of such lauded features as Rebecca Daly's The Other Side of Sleep, recently selected for the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes, and John Michael McDonagh's The Guard, now on general release, which won the Fleadh's audience award.
The increasing breadth of Irish cinema was confirmed with a screening of Neil Dowling's fine, quirky Sarang Hey!Set in Germany and South Korea, the picture – a variation on the Brief Encountermodel – has a funky, offbeat charm that is all its own.
Among other pictures drawing positive notice was Gerard Hurley's beautifully composed, gorgeously acted The Pier. It tells a common story in Irish literature and film: the returning emigrant confronts what has changed and what has remained the same.
But, though The Piernever thrusts or flourishes, it is a great success on its own quiet terms. The director plays a man who, told his father (Karl Johnson) is dying, travels from New York to Cork to discover the old codger looking a little healthier than expected. An amusing, touching battle of wills then develops. The picture never comes close to striking a bum note.
A returning emigrant was also at the heart of Darragh Byrne's Parked, the Fleadh's opening film. Colm Meaney plays a middle-aged man who, after moving back from England, is forced to live in his not particularly huge car. While parked by the sea in Dublin, he befriends a young drug user and starts something a little like a romantic relationship with a Finnish woman. It's a smart idea for a film and the picture just about exploits the concept to its full potential. Perhaps it's a little short on plot. Maybe it tends towards sentimentality in its final reel. But this is a very disciplined piece of work. The film-makers' risky decision to tell us so little about the protagonist's background – how on earth did he get here? – adds impressive layers of mystery and nuance to the piece. Expect a limited commercial release later in the year.
Parkedand The Piercould not be more different in tone and setting to Terry McMahon's utterly bizarre Charlie Casanova. The film has already been picking up various classes of buzz at festivals such as South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. It turns out to be a pretty jaw-dropping piece of work. This is one of several recent films that (a little belatedly, perhaps) seek to address the phenomenon of the new young rich in post-boom Ireland. Selling itself as the first movie conceived and constructed via Facebook, Charlie Casanovafollows a psychopathically selfish berk as he slaps, shags and ultimately murders his way around a city trapped in near-permanent night. The actors are pretty good. The glossy, claustrophobic tech-work is up to scratch. But, darling, the dialogue! McMahon, a man of no small ambition, has (deliberately or not) pitched his tent somewhere between Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Cluband Albert Camus's L'Étranger(and on the same plain as Luke Rhinehart's The Dice Man). As the existentially troubled anti-hero engages with this contemporary Hades, large lumps of quasi-philosophic waffle squash the preposterous voiceover into puzzling indigestibility.
The film reaches tipping point when the hero begins a rant at a comedy club with the opening line of that Camus book. Thank heavens the poor fellow's mother wasn't alive to see it. (Get it?) Charlie Casanovaclearly worked for many viewers. McMahon's film shared the best first feature award with the less overheated Parked. There is, thus, every chance it will reach your local cinema some time soon.
