An Irish film about the life of gas-station caretaker, Josie, a simple-minded good-hearted man, craving for social and love interaction, but somewhat autistic or slightly mentally challenged, and of his life in an isolated town in rural Ireland.
The story has many good points and thought-provoking elements of exploration: The nature of friendship -and its limits-, the contradictions of modern Law and old ways of socializing, pace and change in rural areas, the thin limits existing between success and fracas in such an environment, and the depiction of rural life.
I think that the movie success at doing well the latter, and the viewer witnesses the lives of the town's apparently happy but deeply dissatisfied dwellers, their miseries and broken dreams, their monotonous social interaction, their role and social hierarchy, and their latent immobility and frustration. In fact, this is a movie about sad frustrated people unwilling to change living in an isolate place that feeds those frustrations.
The premise is interesting, no matter how boring life can be in any town, not even in one like this. The problem is the overall dullness of the movie, which is too slow in pace but too schematic in the depiction of the actions and character of the main characters. In fact, if the characters had been drawn with a little bit more of psychological depth and in a less descriptive way, the movie would have had benefited enormously from it. Pat Shortt, the leading actor, is inexpressive in his performance, and I don't think it is his fault, but the director and the script's.
The conversations of Josie with the horse, his interaction with some of the teens in town, his sexual frustration and the depiction of his poor personal house and life are the things I liked the most, and also how some fellow-town man and woman change their attitude to Josie when he tries to change. I also liked the end, which is both factual and metaphorical, and very moving, as it shows the repercussions that a little drama can have in the life of a dweller of a narrow-minded town.
To me, the dull performances by most actors, the tempo of the movie, and, above all, the poor direction killed a story that had many possibilities.
The story has many good points and thought-provoking elements of exploration: The nature of friendship -and its limits-, the contradictions of modern Law and old ways of socializing, pace and change in rural areas, the thin limits existing between success and fracas in such an environment, and the depiction of rural life.
I think that the movie success at doing well the latter, and the viewer witnesses the lives of the town's apparently happy but deeply dissatisfied dwellers, their miseries and broken dreams, their monotonous social interaction, their role and social hierarchy, and their latent immobility and frustration. In fact, this is a movie about sad frustrated people unwilling to change living in an isolate place that feeds those frustrations.
The premise is interesting, no matter how boring life can be in any town, not even in one like this. The problem is the overall dullness of the movie, which is too slow in pace but too schematic in the depiction of the actions and character of the main characters. In fact, if the characters had been drawn with a little bit more of psychological depth and in a less descriptive way, the movie would have had benefited enormously from it. Pat Shortt, the leading actor, is inexpressive in his performance, and I don't think it is his fault, but the director and the script's.
The conversations of Josie with the horse, his interaction with some of the teens in town, his sexual frustration and the depiction of his poor personal house and life are the things I liked the most, and also how some fellow-town man and woman change their attitude to Josie when he tries to change. I also liked the end, which is both factual and metaphorical, and very moving, as it shows the repercussions that a little drama can have in the life of a dweller of a narrow-minded town.
To me, the dull performances by most actors, the tempo of the movie, and, above all, the poor direction killed a story that had many possibilities.