Pavee Lackeen (The Traveller Girl)

Given that most don’t care to see such people within a 10 mile radius of their abodes, it’s hardly surprising that we’re not all that used to seeing screen representations of the itinerant community. When they have happened along, they’re either in the service of heavy duty allegory (see most Joe Comerford movies) or sugar-coated to the point where any resemblance to travellers or other humans, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Ellen Barkin living in a caravan. As if.
Perry Ogden’s fine film – a loose series of naturalistic vignettes following its eponymous traveller girl – doesn’t entirely avoid romanticizing its subject. As we wander after our heroine, there are perhaps too many shots depicting togetherness among Ireland’s newly acquired ethnic minorities and assorted auslanders. The peoples of China, Africa and alt-lifestyles are all dutifully represented.
Still, one can hardly find fault with Pavee Lackeen’s desire to be inclusive. Besides, in nearly all other respects, it’s quite unlike any Irish film we’ve seen before, bearing more of a resemblance to the work of Bresson or the Dardennes. Eschewing conventional drama in favour of freeform social realism, Mr. Ogden follows its non-professional star (Winnie Maughn) doing typically teenage things – dossing around arcades, getting suspended from school, sniffing petrol and eating chips.
Back home in a caravan that houses an incalculable number of children, her mother faces the endless trauma of being moved on, with no real place to move on to. In this respect the film is commendably unblinking, a sort of ‘kitchen sink’ piece, but without the running water.
Unlike that genre, however, Ogden’s poignantly ordinary verite ensures that the material is blanched of its potential for melodramatic excess. His cause is further enabled by the cast of non-actors (largely drawn from the travelling community) who all acquit themselves admirably, conveying quiet, defeated desperation in largely improvised parts. As a result, Pavee Lackeen feels like a curious real-time documentary, and like the best examples of that form, the film ably functions as art and document. Besides, any film that might be described as Bressonian is just fine by me.