Film review: Gabriel Byrne is delightfully roguish in Death of a Ladies’ Man
A scene from Death of a Ladies’ Man.
★★★★☆
It’s a bold move, calling your film after one of Leonard Cohen’s least-loved albums, but (15A) certainly fits the bill.
Lecturing on poetry in a Montreal university, Irish exile Sam O’Shea (Gabriel Byrne) is a hard-drinking serial philanderer who is shocked to discover that his latest wife is cheating on him. Ramping up on the hard stuff, Sam plunges into a downward spiral of ‘trippy, booze-fuelled psychosis’, during which he experiences hallucinations that include fire-breathing dragons and conversations with his dead father, Ben (Brian Gleeson).
