Pilgrim Hill director Gerard Barrett swaps rural Kerry for Tallaght in another nuanced and restrained exploration of loneliness, isolation and familial duty. With a distinct talent for exploring the power of silence, Barrett provides a terrific sense of emotional realism, giving his films an ethnographic quality. Inviting the audience to follow his characters through the small movements and life-changing moments of their day-to-day existence, Barrett doesn’t worry about back stories. Rather, he understands that much can be inferred from small details: the disrepair of a house; the comfortable silence of a friendship; the layers of guilt and resignation that lead a son to pour his alcoholic mother another glass of wine.
Jack Reynor brings the expressive energy he displayed in What Richard Did to this story of a young man from the opposite end of the socio-economic spectrum. Playing John, a taxi driver and unofficial caretaker to his aggressively alcoholic mother Jean (Toni Collette), Reynor impressively shows the love, frustration and paternalistic care he feels for his mother. Their complicated dynamic, which switches from loving, playful banter to desperate screaming in an instant – her looking for the booze he’s thrown out, him looking for the mother she’s drowned out – is an emotive dance, with John struggling to break the routine of unearthing hidden drinks, worrying about his mother, chasing her, hospitalising her etc.
The overall effectiveness of Barrett’s slowburning story is undercut by a needless scene with Collette that has far too much exposition – and a confusingly enigmatic ending that has far too little. They’re rare rhythmic missteps in an otherwise intriguing journey.