The Sparrow review: An exquisitely crafted, expertly performed Irish murder ballad

In the opening scenes of Michael Kinirons’s beguiling murder ballad, Kevin (Ollie West), the troubled young protagonist, is accosted by the Garda for zipping around on a quad bike, breaking the windows of a derelict building, and generally tearing about the west Cork village of Baltimore. His younger sister Sally (Michelle Gleeson) sounds the alarm; Kevin’s in trouble again. His gruff soldier dad (David O’Hara) delegates to Kevin’s gruffer older brother, Robbie (Éanna Hardwicke). The latter punishes Kevin with a hard punch to the gut.

Kevin’s outsider adolescence is amplified by grief for his dead mother. He lies next to her grave on her anniversary and occasionally tries on her lipstick. His father responds with brutality; his brother blames all familial discord on their mother’s “whoring around”.

It’s a conflict that culminates in a tragic accident.

In the aftermath, Kevin, already trapped in an unsettled home, is doubly imprisoned by guilt. As the authorities close in, he frantically tends to the abandoned injured bird of the title.

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The Sparrow review: An exquisitely crafted, expertly performed Irish murder ballad

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The precisely, sensitively calibrated script from writer-director Kinirons, who previously co-wrote the 2015 drama Strangerland, starring Nicole Kidman, ensures that the caged-bird metaphor is not overworked. Similarly, the strikingly toxic masculinity of the overture is slowly unmasked as a knot of remorse and insecurity.

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The vice-like grip of The Swallow’s escalating tension is complemented by Christopher White’s sorrowful score, Aza Hand and Adrian Conway’s Ifta-winning sound design and Richard Kendrick’s lush cinematography. The production design foregrounds watery greens and ominous shadows. A judicious use of overhead, omnipotent shots weight the sense of mounting consequences.

Hardwicke and O’Hara make for forbidding facades with unexpected depths, but impressive newcomer Ollie West, who appears in every scene, shoulders most of the emotional heft. A belated and most welcome release for the exquisitely crafted, expertly performed winner of best debut feature at the 2022 Galway Film Fleadh.