It's far from being a Mickey Mouse event these days, but the Galway Film Fleadh had a distinctly rodent-ish feel on Tuesday's opening night. Former Boomtown Rats Bob Geldof and Pete Briquette were on hand to support director Steve Barron, writer Wesley Burrowes, and most of the key cast and crew for the world premiere of Rat (for which Geldof and Briquette provided the music).
Imagine Tolka Row scripted by Franz Kafka with some help from Myles na Gopaleen, and you'll have some sense of this often hilarious black comic fantasy. Set ambiguously at some point between the 1960s and the present-day, Rat tells the story of Kimmage bread delivery man Hubert Flynn (Pete Postlethwaite), who comes home from the pub one night and promptly turns into a small white rat, to the consternation of his wife, Conchita (Imelda Staunton). Hubert's plight attracts the attention of an unscrupulous young journalist (David Wilmot), who moves in with Conchita and her two teenaged children (Andrew Lovern and Kerry Condon) to write the lucrative "book, and then the film of the book, and then the book of the film" about the whole saga.
As written by Burrowes, Rat draws on a particularly Dublinesque sense of humour, full of wordplay and malapropisms. Frank Kelly, as the oracular uncle, provides an endless stream of memorably groanworthy pronouncements, and Niall Toibin goes merrily over the top as a psychopathic priest with a taste for violent exorcisms, but it's Staunton who steals the show as the rage-filled Conchita.
Dublin-born director Steve Barron, whose credits range from the sublime (Michael Jackson's Billie Jean video) to the ridiculous (the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie) does a marvellous job in keeping this apparently wayward vehicle on the right tracks all the way through.
There will be plenty more feature premieres in Galway this weekend, with Peter Sheridan's Borstal Boy, Conor McPherson's Saltwater and Kevin Liddy's Country all receiving their first Irish screenings. Director Stephen Frears introduced his new movie, High Fidelity (which opens nationwide next week) to the festival audience last night, and will conduct a director's masterclass this afternoon. But the main mid-week focus has been on documentaries.
Of the local productions, Liam McGrath's Ahead of the Class stands out as a tender, affecting and informative depiction of the particular challenges faced by gifted children in coping with an educational system not equipped for their needs. In his previous film, Southpaw, about the boxer Francis Barrett, McGrath demonstrated his ability to develop a strong empathy with his subject, and that ability stands him in good stead again for this unassuming film, which provides a moving insight into the social isolation felt by young people such as Shane Carr from west Donegal. It also had a ready-made star in four-year-old Paul McDonaghForde from Sligo, who had the audience rolling in the aisles with his disquisitions on everything from the counties of Ireland to the rings of Saturn, and who could be heard after the screening enquiring loudly as to why some of his scenes had been cut.
In a different genre, two documentary profiles of 20th century Irish artists - one extremely well known, the other half-forgotten - were in a familiar style, intercutting interviews, location footage and archive material. Ian Palmer's James Joyce: The Trials of Ulysses, examined the turbulent life of the writer during the writing of his most famous novel. While much of the material was familiar, there was an added emphasis on Joyce's atrocious behaviour towards Nora Barnacle while the couple was in Trieste, which made his portrayal in Pat Murphy's Nora seem almost saintly. As always, the problem with a film such as this is the absence of primary sources - a 30-second archive clip with Sylvia Beach told us more about the subject than half and hour of academic talking heads. Steve Woods's Estella suffers from the same problem in looking at the life and works of painter Estella Solomons (1882 - 1968). Clearly a heartfelt attempt by Woods to revive his subject's critical reputation, the resulting film is highly competent but rather detached.
There was certainly a contrast between the small-screen style of these Irish productions and the more expansive approach of documentaries such as Kevin McDonald's One Day in September or Jem Cohen and Peter Sillen's Benjamin Smoke, a lovingly crafted piece of alternative Americana chronicling the last few months in the life of an avant-garde musician. There is nothing wrong with television programmes, but these were films, in a way that the Irish material was not.
The Galway Film Fleadh continues until Sunday. For information phone 091-751655/ email:gafleadh@iol.ie
