Directed by Ian FitzGibbon. Starring Dylan Moran, Mark Doherty, Keith Allen, Amy Huberman, David O'Doherty, Aisling O'Sullivan. 15A cert, gen release, 87 min
REPLETE WITH movie references and streaked with humour that turns pitch black, A Film with Me in It is a film with its screenwriter Mark Doherty in it as a luckless actor named Mark. Mark is introduced during the pre-credits sequence as a bundle of nerves when he auditions for the minor role of a nervous neighbour in a Neil Jordan film. In a perfectly deadpan cameo appearance, Jordan brusquely turns him down.
Mark goes about with a permanent hangdog expression, and with good reason. His girlfriend Sally (Amy Huberman) is threatening to leave him, and his grumpy landlord (Keith Allen) is demanding long overdue rent on the rundown apartment Mark and Sally share with his disabled brother (David O'Doherty) and their dog.
Another resident in that decrepit building is Mark's best friend, Pierce (Dylan Moran), a dissolute aspirant screenwriter and film director addicted to alcohol and gambling. Pierce is that familiar figure in artistic circles, the type who is so far removed from reality that he spends more time talking about his creative ambitions than doing anything to realise them. The assistant as his local Paddy Power outlet breezily greets him with the line, "Hello, Martin Scorsese."
Accidents will happen, and they follow in swift succession through an entertaining, outlandish series of coincidences in a neatly structured scenario in which events that seem incidental or irrelevant rebound to prove otherwise. As the body count escalates even more rapidly than the cameo count, Mark and Pierce find themselves caught up in a real-life drama more extreme than any of Pierce's pretentious screenplays.
Director Ian FitzGibbon affirms the flair for farce and irreverent humour he exhibited in the TV series Paths to Freedom and its movie spin-off, Spin the Bottle. Although the energy levels of his new film sag around the middle, they soon recover, boosted by Denis Woods's very effective score, as the tone of the farce darkens even further.
Imagine Withnail & I reworked by Joe Orton and you will begin to get the measure of Doherty's acute, unsparing screenplay, which offers juicy roles for himself and Moran as a definitively odd couple.
