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FILM Michael Armstrong Tom Lordan Michael McDermo
tt Jack O’Higgins Shane O’Reilly illustration: Barry Haughey Vivarium Director: Lorcan Finnegan Talent: Imogen Poots, Jesse Eisenberg, Jonathan Aris Released: 27 March “All we wanted was a home.” – Gemma (Imogen Poots) is exasperated as her search for a home with husband Tom (Jesse Eisenberg) takes a sinister turn in Irish director Lorcan Finnegan’s new feature. A decade ago, I met Vivarium co-writer Garret Shanley at a comic convention, where he was selling hilarious parodies of ‘50s horror and superhero comics. When I told him I wanted to be a comic writer, he dryly responded, with only a hint of despair, that there was no living to be made out of that. Flashforward to 2020, and Shanley, along with co-writer and director Lorcan Finnegan, has created Vivarium, an unsettling science fiction thriller starring Hollywood stars Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots. It’s a long way from the glorified gazebo that held Dundrum Comic Con all those years ago. The film follows Tom and Gemma, a happy young couple hoping to buy a house. While on the hunt for a home, they meet an estate agent called Martin who tells them of a new development called Yonder. Martin is, in a word, bizarre. He possesses a hysterical plastic grin, puts emphasis on the wrong words in sentences, and waves his arms around in gestures that are meant to be enthusiastic, but comes across as utterly rigid. It seems like actor Jonathan Amis has been told to ape a video-game character from the late ‘90s. Nonetheless, Tom and Gemma indulge this hopelessly strange man and follow him to Yonder – an endless parade of identical, empty bungalows that stretch on for miles. Here Finnegan and his cinematographer MacGregor recall the cool palettes and smooth camera work of David Fincher when depicting this anti-septic Legoland. When Martin disappears, the two find themselves trapped in this uninhabited estate. Driving Calm With Horses Director: Nick Rowland Talent: Barry Keoghan, Cosmo Jarvis, Niamh Algar Released: 13 March Truffaut reportedly said that there was no such thing as an anti-war film. He might have said the same for the anti-gangster genre, as it seems filmmakers can’t help but elevate the criminal underworld in their attempts to render it. Calm With Horses makes an admirable effort to break the mould, setting its tale of a job gone wrong on the west coast of Ireland, with characters whose getaway fantasies stretch no further than a fresh start in Rochestown, Co. Cork. Based on a short story of the same name by Colin Barrett, this debut feature from Nick Rowland stars Barry Keoghan as Dymphna, a young buck in the Devers crime family, and Cosmo Jarvis as Douglas ‘Arm’ Armstrong, the Lenny to his George. Jarvis gives a standout performance as the luggish enforcer, finding the pathos in Arm’s stilted half-sentences as he struggles to reconnect with his ex-partner Ursula (Niamh Algar), and to be more than just a tool for others to exploit. The film needs you to believe there was no other option for Arm but to get involved with the gang. This is conveyed by the suffocating and bleak setting, complete with a boarded-up Garda station missing the G and the D. It’s a credit to Jarvis that he also sells Arm’s character turn, in which a moment of mercy risks the wrath of the clan, personified in the paranoid and menacing Uncle Paudi (a scene stealing turn from Ned Dennehy). Shit rolls downhill and with increasing force in such hierarchies, and the status of both young men as ‘loyal skins’ quickly starts to evaporate. The film attempts a redemptive final act for Arm, but one that sits uneasily. It’s unclear what good it does to evoke sympathy for men like Arm who do violent things, and to contrast them with truly violent men like the Devers. It feels increasingly like a distinction without a difference. MA around in circles for hours, they seek refuge in the house they viewed. After days spent trying to escape, a package arrives at their door containing food and a baby. The message inscribed on the inside; ‘Raise the child, and you will be released.’ What ensues is a strange cocktail of domestic drama and science fiction horror. The boy, who grows at a supernatural rate, is a nasty piece of work. He shrieks when he wants food, talks in an unnerving warbly voice, and seems incapable of any kind of human behaviour that isn’t wholly imitated from his guardians. With no contact to the outside world, the couple tries to occupy their time any way they can. Tom starts to dig a hole in the garden, trying to find an end to Yonder, while Gemma becomes more invested in raising this monstrous child. Their relationship starts to disintegrate, and before long, the couple represent a warped version of suburban ennui. But while Eisenberg and Poots do their best to sell this downward spiral, it all too often feels like the machinations of the writers, out to prove a point. What really makes Vivarium so compelling is its sheer revulsion for children. It’s up there with Eraserhead in its deep-seated anxieties about child-rearing: the effect they have on relationships, the alienness of young children to their parents, how society pressures us into producing more of them for a capitalist society, hungry for more labour. By the end, we barely discover what the child and Yonder truly are. But we know they are trying to replace us, and we know that they will win. JOH And Then We Danced Director: Levan Akin Talent: Levan Gelbakhiani, Bachi Valishvili, Ana Javakishvili Released: 13 March And Then We Danced follows the obsessive and hard working young dancer Merab (a fantastic turn by Levan Gelbakhiani) as he trains at the National Georgian Ensemble with his partner, Mary (Ana Javakishvili), which he has been doing since he was a child. When the charismatic Irakli (Bachi Valishvili) strides into the building, what starts out as friendly competition between the pair develops into something much more. A love letter to Georgia in many ways, it’s also a passionate film exhibiting the frustrations of modern life there for young people like Merab, that perhaps don’t fit the mould. Modern Tbilisi is very much an old fashioned city mired in its ways. There’s still a strong sense of national pride felt when it comes to traditional Georgian dance, a tradition heavily entrenched in machismo. Throughout, there are numerous scenes of performance, inside and out of the studio. Full of vigour and passion, there’s something almost warrior-like about the dancing, with a lot of leading elbows and angles and fierce stances. Which makes the climatic scene all that more aggressive and beautiful. It’s suggested that Mareb is too soft and too unique to be a successful Georgian dancer and perhaps that’s the point. He’s an open book, ready to break the mould, not neatly fitting in. He’s the new generation, of a new Tbilisi, one just waiting for its moment, and one that will pull away from the traditional vocations and the attitudes that has halted change, inclusivity and acceptance. A surprisingly powerful and delicately crafted film. SOR 76