Film Review: Tarrac is the latest Irish-language gem - but the story runs a bit straight
Tarrac: the naomhóg is the central part of the Irish-language film.
- Tarrac
- ★★★☆☆
- Cinema release
The glorious landscape of west Kerry provides the setting for (15A), which begins with Aoife Ní Bhraoin (Kelly Gough) returning home to the Kerry Gaeltacht from Dublin to care for her father Brendan ‘Bear’ Ó Braoin (Lorcan Cranitch) after he suffers a heart-attack.
Initially reluctant to re-engage with her childhood home, Aoife is lured back into ‘the way of the naomhóg’ — the brutally tough world of competitive rowing — by her old boatmates Jude (Kate Nic Chonaonaigh) and Naomi (Rachel Feeney).
But the naomhóg was her mother’s sport too, and with each pull on the oars, Aoife excavates another reason to hate the father who abandoned them both just when they needed him most.
Written by Eugene O’Brien and directed by Declan Recks, Tarrac is an intimate family drama that celebrates the fact that a ‘family’ is not necessarily something you’re born into.
Aoife spends the film processing a host of conflicting emotions, but Kelly Gough’s no-nonsense approach gives her character’s vulnerabilities a sturdy core, and she gets good support from delightfully surly and largely uncommunicative Lorcan Cranitch as the former village hero who is shocked to discover that his feet are made of clay (there’s a nice turn too from Cillian Ó Gairbhí as the village’s resident gobdaw).
Rich in emotional tension, the film is rather undermined by a story that is arrow-straight as it propels Aoife back into the heart of her community.
