Film review: Foscadh is an emotionally charged and psychologically complex film
★★★★☆
Set in rural Connemara, Foscadh (Shelter) (16s) takes an interesting approach to its exploration of masculinity. Left alone in the world when his mother suffers a fatal heart-attack, the slow-witted John (Dónall Ó Héalai) is told by his elderly neighbour Paddy (Macdara Ó Fátharta) that ‘it’s time to stop living like a ghost'.
After suffering a terrible beating at the hands of a local bully who envies John the farm he has inherited, John wakes up in hospital and slowly befriends his fellow patient Dave (Cillian O’Gairbhi) and the nurse Siobhan (Fionnuala Flaherty). Scorning not his simplicity, Siobhan remains friends with John when he is released from hospital, and soon a tentative romance shows signs of blossoming. But can John take the big step forward and become the kind of man Siobhan can love?
Loosely adapted from Donal Ryan’s novel , is an unsentimental coming-of-age film from writer-director Sean Breathnach.
John may be an adult, but — sheltered by his parents from early childhood — he is to all intents and purposes a child, and one confused by the conflicting advice he receives from Dave, Paddy and Siobhan on how he needs to behave if he wants to be considered a real man.
All of which sounds a little mechanical, but Sean Breathnach has crafted an emotionally charged and psychologically complex film, in large part because Dónall Ó Héalai is artfully understated in his reading of the permanently befuddled but achingly genuine John.
Elsewhere, Cillian O’Gairbhi makes for a boisterous presence as the boozy, irrepressible Dave, while Fionnuala Flaherty is deliciously ambiguous as the love interest whose motives are suspected by all.
(cinema release)
