4 Star

From Madison Square Garden to the Dublin Night-Lights.

Writer/director Chiara Viale brings us her first feature length film from her newly formed Production company Built To Fail, and they don’t. This coming of age film takes an older subject and the fact that they have to come to terms with the way life will be from now on. A period of self-pity but then the great healing hands of music in its many forms does its job admirably. For Punk fans, a cracking soundtrack (that I can’t find to buy, by the way).

“…Get away with what you can. You don’t have to be part of any machine. Except maybe your own.

Mike Watt – Minutemen.

A young man sits in a car in a secluded spot somewhere outside Dublin City. He pulls away, and we next see him crossing the streets of Dublin trying to find somewhere. What he does find is Will’s (Jack Fenton, Fletcher’s Hit (Short)) house share, along with other residents Jodie (Martina Babisova, The Man with Hare Ears, The Comeback) and David (Patrick O’Brien, Picture of you, Ducks Fly Together (Short)). Our new resident is Adrian (Cilléin McEvoy, Life Begins Now, I Feel Fantastic (Short)) a young man that was brought up with pushy parents, (Paula McGlinchey, Writing Home, Jesus the Remake) that set him on the career of concert pianist, and he has shone playing in Vienna and Madison Square Garden.

So why so glum and standoffish? Our Adrian has a secret and his fellow house mates will have to get it out of him, but in the meantime they have their hands full with studying (Will and David) while Jodie works part-time and full-time looks after the house chores. They manage that and rehearsing their punk rock songs in their band ‘Cellmates’. Adrian is too highbrow for that nonsense.

Even getting hot tickets to see ‘Shit Present’ can’t get him excited for their style of music. Slowly but surely the infectious trio start to warm up the downhearted Adrian.

As you are foot-tapping along to the music Adrian starts to unwind a bit and when he drops his bombshell on Jodie the rest of the house pulls together to bring this all to thumping happy ending. Great fun.

A great way to spend a Sunday Afternoon listening to modern Punk Rock in an Irish Pub. A great start to Chiara Viale directing career and everybody else involved.