Brendan Canty, a smart Cork film-maker best known before now for music videos, finds an agreeable middle point between rugged social realism and geezer romp with his debut feature.
The presence of Chris Walley, one of the Young Offenders, in a supporting role points up the relish in profane misbehaviour that it shares with that successful film and TV series. At the same time, the film deals with drug addiction, social exclusion and issues in the care system. It’s a tricky juggling act, but Canty pulls it off with some élan. There are whiffs of Shane Meadows at his cheekiest here.
Danny Power, whom Canty discovered for an acclaimed 14-minute version of Christy from 2019, stars as the titular North Cork character. The film begins with Christy, shuttled around foster care since the death of his mother, being billeted on his half-brother, Shane (Diarmuid Noyes), who is currently enjoying a stable life with his partner, Stacey (Emma Willis), in everyday suburbia.
There is a sense that Shane feels that Christy, a potential loose cannon, might drag him back to the troubled world from which they emerged. His brother is plainly a decent fellow – at home to the angular humour that characterises the city – but, not yet 18, Christy has still to show an ability to knuckle down. Odd jobs tend to break down into horseplay. Free afternoons are eaten up with mindless dossing. Stacey is more accepting of our hero, but it feels as if the tension in the house will eventually cause a damaging rupture.
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The film finds air and life in Christy’s friendship with a posse of local lads that includes an incorrigible wheelchair user called Robot (Jamie Forde, a whirlwind of comic energy). Something like purpose comes with the appearance of Pauline (Helen Behan), an old friend of his mum’s who runs a local hair salon.
What do you know? He shows a bit of aptitude for haircutting – as well as the gift for chat that the job requires – and opens to the possibility of a steadier life. Meanwhile, a houseful of gangster cousins threatens to disrupt his progress with the allure of a more malign adulthood.
There is nothing here we haven’t seen in a dozen other social-realist yarns. The tension between the straight life and drugged dissolution has always been a useful narrative peg. But that is not really where Canty’s focus lies. This clattering, noisy, mostly joyful film – winner of a prize at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival – revels in the texture of life around the Knocknaheeny area of the city.
Canty drew his cast largely from the Kabin Studio, a not-for-profit facility that assists young people to express themselves through music and performance. At times the film breaks down into delightful, pulsing hip-hoperetta, demonstrating that teenagers are different throughout the world – and also a bit the same.
The cast feel at home because they are at home. Danny Power, in particular, struts like a natural, chewing up the lines as if they have sprung fresh and undigested from a still-developing mind.
Not everything works. Alison Oliver, star of Saltburn and Conversations with Friends, is reliably excellent as a local addict who attaches herself to Christy, but the character seems bussed in from a bleaker film. There is maybe a little too much meandering in the middle sections.
But, shot with a smoky allure by Colm Hogan, who did such good work on the recent horror Oddity, Christy cannot be faulted for its precise sense of place and, thanks to a taut script from the director and Alan O’Gorman, its convincing re-creation of contemporary argot. Keep an eye on everyone involved.
In cinemas from Friday, August 29th
