It is fortuitous that Dinard British Film Festival, in Brittany in northwestern France, was rebranded earlier this year as Dinard British & Irish Film Festival. Last year’s Union Jack bunting would surely have looked out of place at the local premiere of Kneecap.
The name change is something of a formality. Dinard has long been a launch pad for Irish film in Europe. An Cailín Ciúin played here ahead of its Oscar run. That film’s director, Colm Bairéad, returned this year as a juror for the festival’s 35th edition. His noted compatriots Alan Gilsenan, Marian Quinn, Sade Malone and Christine Molloy were among the festival attendees.
The programme was further enlivened by such superb Irish produce as Jamie O’Rourke’s award-winning short Calf and Alessandra Celesia’s The Flats, a moving and indelible chronicle of contemporary life in west Belfast.
Bring Them Down, a gory new rural revenge drama starring Barry Keoghan as a troubled youth, competed in the official competition with That They May Face the Rising Sun, Pat Collins’s home-grown box-office hit, and the Irish co-production (and eventual winner) September Says.
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A nail-biting overture introduces a slightly convoluted set-up: Michael (the brilliant Christopher Abbott, taking on a mostly Irish-speaking role) is driving a car when his long-suffering mother (Susan Lynch, impeccable) announces that she is leaving his father. His girlfriend, Caroline (Nora-Jane Noone), screams from the back seat as he speeds up and loses control of the vehicle.
Years later, Michael is a taciturn bachelor who alternately tends to his ailing, cantankerous father (Colm Meaney) and his prize sheep. Caroline, her face scarred from the crash, lives unhappily on a neighbouring farm with her scowling husband (Paul Ready) and shifty son, Jack (Keoghan).
She remains on good terms with the guilt-ridden Michael. Her family are less forgiving. When two of Michael’s rams go missing it ignites a feud that swiftly escalates into ghoulish horror.
Jean-Luc Godard once observed that all you need for a movie is a gun and a cat. This punishing thriller takes that maxim to sickening extremes of animal cruelty. The script attempts a Rashomon structure, where the story is told from differing perspectives, but the final instalment tells us nothing we didn’t know or suspect. Worse, it revisits scenes of mutilation that have already outstayed their welcome.
Magnetic performances elevate the material. Simmering anger blazes up the screen. Only an actor of Meaney’s calibre could make an infirm character so menacing. Keoghan revisits the vulnerability and sadism of his mean teens from Love/Hate and The Killing of a Sacred Deer. Nick Cooke’s cinematography finds otherworldly beauty in the film’s Co Wicklow locations. Hannah Peel’s sparse soundtrack is unnerving. There are things to admire, but Bring Them Down is a hard film to like.
