Parky At the Pictures (12/9/2025)

(Reviews of Christy; and Islands)

CHRISTY.

A very different Cork to the one seen in Peter Foott's The Young Offenders (2016) and its ongoing spin-off series (2018-) emerges in Brendan Canty's Christy. Expanded from a 2019 short of the same name, this Berlin prize-winner represents an impressive step up for a feature debutant who was previously best known for the video for Hozier's `Take Me to Church'.

About to turn 18, Christy (Danny Power) has been ejected from his latest foster home in Ballincollig for fighting with another boy. Half-brother, Shane (Diarmud Noyes), agrees to put him up in his Knocknaheeny council house, while social worker, Gerard (Ciaran Bermingham), finds another billet. But neither sibling is happy with an arrangement that sees Christy take over his infant niece's room, while she bunks with Shane and his wife, Stacey (Emma Willis).

As part of the deal, Christy helps Shane with his decorating business, as assistant Trevor (Chris Walley) is an aspiring boxer who is distracted by an upcoming bout. Rather than mooch around the house, however, Christy drifts into the orbit of Leona (Cara Cullen), who knocks about the Northside estate with the wheelchair-bound Robot (Jamie Forde), Joey (Sophie McNamara), Fingers (Ciaran McCarthy), Aveen (Taylor Lee-Keating), and Radar (Kane O'Connell O'Flynn), who are collecting firewood for a forthcoming bonfire.

When the group is threatened by the bristling Troy (Lewis Brophy) and his mates, Christy stands his corner and is surprised to learn that Troy is his cousin. He says nothing about the skirmish to Shane, who is furious when his van is damaged in a midnight ramming and he orders Christy to have nothing to do with his cousins, as they were responsible for their late mother getting hooked on drugs.

Feeling picked on, Christy wanders into town, where he makes the acquaintance of Chloe (Alison Oliver), a recovering addict who is sleeping rough. She understands his sense of frustration and Stacey is equally supportive when Christy turns up for breakfast after a night of not answering his phone. However, he's powerless to resist when Troy orders him into a car to visit his older brother, Jammy (Ian Tabone), who tries to intimidate him and orders him to stop talking to his Aunt Fionnula (Hilary Vesey), who tries to apologise for not being able to save his mother. Jammy is clearly testing Christy to see if he has what it takes to join his drug gang.

Hearing where his sibling has gone, Shane succumbs to the stress of keeping an eye on him and asks Gerard to find him a haven outside the city. Yet Christy is beginning to feel at home with Leona and her pals. As hairdresser mother, Pauline (Helen Behan), is too busy to give son Radar a haircut before his birthday party, Christy offers to give him a trim, as he has a natural talent for barbering. Pauline is impressed and offers Christy work in her sitting-room salon, while Leona fills him in on all the gossip within the gang, as the party gets into full swing. While everyone is taking their turn at karaoke, Stacey gets smoochy with Shane, as she realises that he is under pressure and suffering from his own demons following his mother's death.

News spreads that Christy is doing haircuts and Pauline confides that he reminds her of his mother. She hints that the cousins were responsible for getting her hooked on drugs, but she trusts him to have the sense to steer clear of them. Shane is more forthright in badmouthing Jammy and Troy and warns Christy not to get too settled. When he realises that Shane has been plotting behind his back to find him a room in a halfway hostel, Shane packs his bag and heads for his auntie's.

He feels uncomfortable in the house, as it's full of partying strangers. Moreover, Troy tries to dissuade him from moving in, as he would willingly escape from his brother's bullying. Jammy makes a point of showing Christy the spot where his mother died and he bridles in striving to withhold his emotions. Hearing where Christy has gone, Shane rushes across the city and forces himself to enter the house. Troy informs him that Christy had left of his own accord and had mentioned something about a bonfire.

Arriving at the wasteground, Shane sees the group sing `Happy Birthday', because Christy has turned 18. He realises that he has found his niche and can be trusted not to veer off the straight and narrow. A few weeks later, Shane comes to Pauline's for a trim. Now lodging in a halfway house, Christy is pleased to see him and they laugh remembering a terrible haircut that their mother had given Shane when she had let the trimmer slip. Shane tells Christy that she would have been proud of him and the film ends with the misfit gang rapping `That's How We Do It in Cork, Kid' over the credit crawl.

Scripted by Alan O'Gorman and photographed by Colm Hogan to nail a sense of place and the nature of the people who inhabit it, this feels like slice of life in a messily authentic rather than academically social realist sort of way. Canty and O'Gorman eschew political point scoring in preferring to let the milieu speak for itself. It's clear from the street views and Martin Goulding's lived-in interiors that the action takes place in a rough-and-ready part of Cork. But the byplay between the excellent performers reinforces the air of community that makes both Christy and the audience feel at home.

A rapper who - like many of the cast - has cropped up in The Young Offenders - Danny Power excels as the taciturn, detached teenager, whose troubled demeanour slowly peals away to reveal a sweet-natured personality, as Christy learns the difference between temptation and possibility. He's still got much to learn, as the story ends, but he has learned some vital lessons in coming to terms with his loss and a chequered past that is allowed to remain in the shadows. As is the case with Shane, who has striven hard not to fall into any traps and is rightly concerned that his unpredictable sibling might threaten the cosy existence that he feels is a reward for having survived the system.

There's nothing particularly new about the subject matter or Canty's depiction of it. Yet this always feels plausible in its approach to everything from bereavement and foster care to family ties and drug dealing. The strand involving the homeless addict flaps slightly in the breeze, while the amusing Trevor disappears somewhat abruptly. But there's something poignant about the regretful look that Christy gives Chloe when he's unable to stop and chat that suggests he's emerging from his own cocoon of self-pity and embracing life for what it is.

ISLANDS.

British audiences won't be particularly familiar with German director Jan-Ole Gerster's A Coffee in Berlin (2012) and Lara (2019). But his first English-language outing, Islands, is going to earn him a following of arthouse aficionados who like their Michelangelo Antonioni laced with a little Patricia Highsmith.

Waking face down on a beach on the Canary Island of Fuerteventura, Tom (Sam Riley) staggers back to his car and drives to the luxury hotel, where he is the tennis coach. Just about surviving the day, and a ticking off about his appearance and time-keeping from receptionist, Maria (Bruna Cusí), he heads home to shower and dance the night away at a club named Waikiki with two of his students, one of whom he beds.

After agreeing to give squeeze seven year-old Anton (Dylan Torrell) into his 9am slot as a favour to his mother, Anne Maguire (Stacy Martin) - who looks curiously familiar - Tom

helps his Moroccan friend, Rafik (Ahmed Boulane), recapture an escaped camel from his farm and is crushed to learn that he and wife Amina (Fatima Adoum) have sold up and are retiring to Casablanca. Too drunk to drive home from the club, Tom spends the night in his car and cop pal Jorge (Pep Ambròs) lets him off with a warning in return for free weekend lessons for his young daughter.

Tom re-strings Anton's racket as a favour and is disappointed when he shows up with his floppy-haired father, Dave (Jark Farthing), who fancies himself as a player and asks for a knock-up after the lesson. Tom overhears him arguing with Anne about their room and asks Maria to transfer them to a better spot without extra charge. Although they are clearly wealthy, Tom declines a gratuity. But he agrees to dinner and hears about Anne's short-lived acting career.

He also consents to show them the island on his day off and takes them to a volcanic cave, where Dave pretends to have fallen through the rock. On an isolated beach, Anne asks Tom to rub sun cream on her back before they calls at the farm so Anton can ride a camel. Over supper, Rafik explains how Tom got the nickname `Ace' after winning a bet on whether Rafael Nadal could return his power serve. Back at the hotel, Anne admonishes Dave for telling Tom about her wild party days. Left alone, Dave admits to being a reluctant parent and coaxes Tom into taking him to Waikiki so he can enjoy his freedom for one night. Despite being a recovering alcoholic, Dave gulps down the drinks and disappears on to the dance floor with a surfer girl named Janis (Agnes Lindström Bolmgren).

When Tom wakes on a sun-lounger by the pool next morning, he discovers that Dave has gone missing. The club bouncer thinks Anne looks familiar, while Jorge is also reluctant to help, as he suspects Dave has hooked up and now feels too guilty to come home. Tom accompanies Anne to the surfer van, where Janis teases Anne by saying that Dave seemed the type who had a nightmare wife. With Anton angry with Anne for being evasive, Tom tries to cheer him up by buying his favourite cereal from a shop in town. Outside the store, he sees Rafik's escaped camel, who has premonitions about volcanic eruptions on Lanzarote. That night, a tremor shakes the hotel and Tom starts to feel uneasy when a local man turns up in a restaurant with Dave's wallet and his clothes are found on the rocks after Anne finds Dave's phone on a footpath above the beach.

Tom comes to a terrible realisation when Anne is quizzed by mainland detective, Mazo (Ramiro Blas), who has uncovered holes in her story. She had deleted a 2am phone call from Dave and CCTV shows that she had rushed out to find him after he had threatened to jump off a cliff because he suspects that he is not Anton's father. Unable to account for his own actions because he was wasted, Tom keeps quiet and notes how Mazo sneers when he says he is just the tennis coach.

Left to babysit Anton for a day, Tom takes him swimming in the sea and gets along well with the boy he now suspects might be his own son, as he did think Anne looked familiar. When the police launch a helicopter search for Dave's body, Tom is surprised when Anne sips martinis as she watches and jokes that she might settle on the island rather than face the real world again. She swims topless in the sea and Mazo looks on, as she lays her head on Tom's shoulder and he is too startled to react. Outside a shop, where Anne is buying straw hats, Mazo tells him that things are looking bad for her and Tom panics into giving her a false alibi, despite being warned that such an action would be foolish.

Taking a room in the hotel to clear his head, Tom accompanies Anne when the chopper spots a body in the water. They watch it being winched up at sunset, but it proves to be the wandering camel. That night, Tom and Anne sleep together, but she is summoned to Lanzarote the next day because Dave has been found. He had swum out to a party boat and been taken to the island, where he had gone to the volcano to peer into its crater. Anne takes Anton to see his father, leaving Tom outside.

He feels used and mopes around the hotel giving lessons and fed up because Maria is no longer speaking to him. Jorge reports that Mazo left for Madrid as soon as Dave was found and Tom is baffled why he claimed he had an eyewitness to a crime. At Waikiki, some drunken Brits challenge him to repeat the Nadal bet and everyone chants `Ace!', as he belts down serves on the floodlight court. He wakes amidst the balls next morning and is helped to his feet by Dave, who thrusts an envelope into his hand for going above and beyond. He makes no mention to his disappearance and the family snubs Tom when it boards the airport bus. Finding that Rafik and Amina have left without saying goodbye, Tom turns up at the airport in the clothes he's standing up in and asks for a ticket.

The fact that Tom doesn't say where he wants to go or whether he is fleeing or having a rare holiday adds to the ambiguity of the denouement. Has he been caught up by chance in remarkable circumstances or has he been the victim of an elaborate ruse to ensure that Anton's sibling has the same father as him to spare Dave's blushes? It's made clear that the Maguires are fabulously wealthy, so perhaps they could afford to stage such a stunt. But Gerster and co-scenarists Blaž Kutin and Lawrie Doran keep their cards very close to their chests.

Slipping between psychological study and tense thriller, Gerster misdirects the audience with mischievous skill, as he presents Anne as a femme fatale and Tom as her dishevelled dupe. The excellence of Sam Riley and Stacy Martin maintains the illusion, as this pastiche noir plays out under the blazing sunshine captured in evocative CinemaScope by cinematographer Juan Sarmiento G. Dascha Dauenhauer's prowling score proves just as effective at invoking such patsy classics as Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity (1944) or Lawrence Kasdan's colour remake, Body Heat (1981). The support playing is equally knowing, with Jack Farthing's gauche spouse and Ramiro Blas's snarling inspector being particularly good.

But it's Riley's dissolute sap who makes this so enthralling and amusing, as his antics suggest a deep unhappiness that he would rather run away from than confront. Was Tom really just a shoulder injury away from greatness, as so few recent films have confronted the anguish of the washed-up sports star who has to plug on with life while being tormented by the memories and what ifs that are continuously being raked up by fans who remember his heyday? We shall never know, but one suspects he is doomed to see his living dream turn into a long goodbye.