Film review: Seána Kerslake is a simmering force of nature in Ballywalter
Patrick Kielty as Shane and Seána Kerslake as Eileen in Ballywalter, in cinemas now. Picture: BT22 Film Ltd/Helen Murray
“Nothing is certain except death and taxis”, as Benjamin Franklin didn’t quite say, but it’s certainly how Eileen (Seána Kerslake) feels as (15A) opens.
Back home in Belfast and living with her mother and pregnant sister after yet another relationship bites the dust, Eileen is staring grimly down the barrel of an unfulfilled life, and while taxi-driving goes some way towards paying the bills, it’s clear from the early stages, in which Eileen reverses over a moped and drives away swearing, that her work-life balance is completely skew-whiff.
A weekly trip out to the coastal village of Ballywalter to bring Shane (Patrick Kielty) to his stand-up comedy class doesn’t really help matters, mainly because Shane isn’t particularly funny for an aspiring comedian, but as the weeks pass, and their conversation progresses beyond grunts and snorts of derision, a tentative bond emerges.
Written by Stacey Gregg and directed by Prasanna Puwanarajah, is a blackly comic fable about learning to live again.
Eileen is hilariously cynical about all things positive when she first meets Shane, but her tough shell, we suspect, is wafer-thin; meanwhile, we wonder why a grown man like Shane still hasn’t learned to drive, and why he believes an audience might want to laugh with, rather than at, his melancholic, dispirited persona.
Kielty, an actual comedian, of course, is very good as the shy, emotionally crippled Shane, but Seána Kerslake is a simmering force of nature in what is her finest performance to date.
Stacey Gregg’s script is a touch formulaic at times, but Kerslake and Kielty dovetail superbly as an odd couple who gradually come to appreciate one another for their oddities.
