Parky At the Pictures (30/1/2026)

(Reviews of Nouvelle Vague; Saipan; and Homegrown)

NOUVELLE VAGUE.

In Redoubtable (2007), Michel Hazanavicius explored the relationship between Jean-Luc Godard (Louis Garrel) and actress Anne Wiazemsky (Stacy Martin) during the shooting of La Chinoise (1967). Now, in Nouvelle Vague, Richard Linklater goes back to the start of the auteur's remarkable, if sometimes contentious career to recall the making of his debut feature, À bout de souffle (aka Breathless, 1960).

In Paris in 1959, Jean-Luc Godard (Guillaume Marbeck) and fellow Cahiers du Cinéma critics, François Truffaut (Adrien Rouyard) and Claude Chabrol (Antoine Besson), join Suzanne Schiffman (Jodie Ruth-Forest) at a screening of Jacques Dupont and Pierre Schoendoerffer's La Passe du diable (1958), which has been produced by Georges de Beauregard (Bruno Dreyfürst). At the post-screening drinks party, Godard informs the latter that his film is awful and protests that he hasn't finished the script for Pêcheur d'islande because the Pierre Loti source novel is dull. He insists he is ready to direct because directing is the best form of criticism. Beauregard reassures Truffaut that Les 400 coups will triumph at Cannes, while Juliette Greco (Alix Bénézech) complements Chabrol on Le Beau Serge (both 1959). Godard grumbles to Schiffman that he is behind schedule, as he wanted to have directed a feature by 25. She reminds him he's made a short, but he dismisses it as `anti-film' and complains that he's the last Cahiers critic to direct, as both Jacques Rivette (Jonas Marmy) and Éric Rohmer (Côme Thieulin) have pipped him.

Stealing money from the Cahiers cashbox, Godard drives to Cannes and joins in the standing ovation for Les 400 coups, as Jean Cocteau (Jean-Jacques Le Vessier) welcomes Truffaut to the brotherhood of film artists. Watching a starlet pose in a bikini on the beach, Beauregard tells Godard that his screenplay for Odile is too long at 250 pages and shrugs off suggestions he makes it a part-musical and calls is Une femme est une femme. Instead, he proposes letting Godard have Truffaut's treatment for a film based on Michel Portail, who had made headlines in 1952 for stealing a car. Reluctantly, Godard agrees to Chabrol sitting in as a technical adviser and taps the notebook of ideas he keeps in his jacket pocket before declaring all he needs for a film is a girl and a gun. However, Beauregard doubts he'll be able to persuade American Jean Seberg (Zoey Deutch) to be his female lead.

She is married to François Moreuil (Paolo Luka Noé) and is feeling fragile after her treatment by Otto Preminger in Bonjour Tristesse (1958). But Liliane David (Léa Luce Busato) is keen to play a part when she finds Godard walking along a Métro

bench, while Truffaut reads the changes made to his scenario. He approves the name Poiccard for the anti-hero, as Godard heads to a boxing gym to seek out amateur pug Jean-Paul Belmondo (Aubry Dullin), who asks if the film is going to be shot like Godard's recent short, Charlotte et son Jules, as he hadn't been able to dub his dialogue because he'd been on active service in Algeria.

At a Cahiers reception, the camera pauses to identify Agnès Varda (Roxane Rivière), Jacques Demy, André Labarthe, Alain Resnais (Pierre Glénat), Jacques Rozier. Jean Rouch, Jacques Doniel-Valcroize, Marilù Parolini. Michel Mourlet, Pierre Kast, Claude Mauriac, Georges Sadoul, and Pierre Braunberger. They have all come to see Roberto Rossellini (Laurent Mothe), who is introduced by Truffaut as the `Father of the nouvelle vague'. He greets the `cinemaniacs' and confides that cinema is a moral act that requires the capturing of reality. Pocketing a handful of sandwiches, he accepts a lift from Godard and encourages him to shoot swiftly from notes rather than a screenplay and without sound. Rossellini also urges him to work only when inspired and bids him adieu with a request for a few francs to tide him over.

As agent Blanche Montel (Jeanne Arènes) tries to prevent Belmondo from committing career suicide by signing up for a Julien Duvivier film that people might actually go and see, Godard hires Pierre Rissient (Benjamin Clery) as his assistant and presents him with a list of location and vehicular requirements, while assuring him that they will get everything done in the 20 scheduled days. Godard seeks out Jean-Pierre Melville (Tom Novembre) on the set of Two Men in Manhattan (1959) and is amused when he tells him to feel free to ignore all the advice he has given him about spontaneity and sub-plots.

As Françoise Arnoul (Cosima Bevernaege) blows out the candles on a birthday cake, Godard meets with Seberg and Moreuil, who is keen for his wife to make a nouvelle vague film after her Preminger encounters. They watch her splash in a fountain, as Moreuil springs the fact Columbia now owns Seberg's contract and will want $15,000 to cast her. When Godard gasps, Moreuil shrugs and assures him she will be worth it.

A veteran war cameraman, Raoul Coutard (Matthieu Penchinat) is sceptical when Godard summons him and asks if he can use an Éclair Cameflex and splice together rolls of Ilford film. He is intrigued by the prospect of shooting in natural light and on the fly, as he is used to guerilla tactics. Despite a tension between them, they agree to collaborate. Seberg is still to be convinced, however, and Belmondo pays her a visit to reassure her that Godard has talent and that his unorthodox methods are what makes working with him so exciting. She feels the story is sordid, even with Truffaut's input, but Belmondo jokes it sounds pretty normal to him.

Promising to spread a rumour that Godard once held up a garage with a gun, Richard Balducci (Pierre-François Garel) is appointed publicist and he suggests that journalist Marc Pierret (Blaise Pettebone) should be embedded as an assistant (which puts Rissient's nose out of joint). Leaving a screening of Frank Tashlin's The Girl Can't Help It (1956), Truffaut tells Godard to be as fast as Rossellini, as witty as Sacha Guitry, as musical as Orson Welles, and as simple as Marcel Pagnol, while also being wounded like Nicholas Ray, effective like Alfred Hitchcock, and profound like Ingmar Bergman. Rohmer, Chabrol, and Varda also urge him to be his insolent self and he smiles behind the shades he never seems to remove.

With Beauregard's reminder to make something comprehensible and sexy ringing in his ears, Godard starts shooting, with Raymond Cauchetier (Franck Cicurel) as the set photographer, Suzon Faye (Pauline Belle) on continuity, and Claude Beausoleil (Benoît Bouthors) as the camera operator. Rissient quotes Jean-Paul Sartre for inspiration, but Godard can't think of what to do first and poses for some photos. Having filmed Belmondo in a phone booth and ordering breakfast in a bar, he calls a wrap after two hours and ignores Seberg's suggestion that he's making it up as he goes along. Beauregard is aghast and orders a red wine.

On the second day, José Bénazeraf (Grégory Dupont) turns up to watch at Liliane David's bedsit, as Godard keeps people hanging around while he thinks of something to shoot. Truffaut drops in just as Godard explains how he wants David to remove her pyjamas from under her dress in a bit lifted from Bergman's Summer Interlude (1951), which Coutard didn't see because he was in French Indochina. Godard also picks a fight with Faye about whether a cup should be in shot because continuity isn't reality. When Truffaut suggests that David should have more scenes - because he is dating her despite being married to Madeleine Morgenstern (Lou Chrétien-Février) - Godard suggests they make a picture together. He also hacks off Seberg, who arrives just as they are breaking up and resents being told to walk to tomorrow's location because it suits her character, Patricia. She threatens to quit and Godard compliments her for getting into the role by not always being a goody-goody.

Day Three begins with Seberg trying to persuade Godard to write down some dialogue, as he insists that improvisation will make the scene fresher. Belmondo concurs and Seberg's mood scarcely improves when she has to argue to keep make-up artist, Phuong Maittret (Jade Phan-Gia). Coutard. meanwhile, agrees to be wheeled around in a lidded postman's cart so that he can film through a whole in the side and make everyone in Paris a potential extra. As they walk doing the `New York Herald Tribune' scene, Seberg asks Belmondo if anything makes sense to him and she pleads with Moreuil to find a way to extricate her because she is sick of Godard talking her through every take. While she rants in the back of a car, Godard films Belmondo reading the paper just as the streetlights come on and he wishes that every shot could be so straightforward.

Arriving for Day Four, Seberg stands behind a seated Godard at an outdoor café and puts her hands over his sunglasses. He gives her a line to unlock Patricia, `Am I unhappy because I am not free or not free because I am unhappy.' She is still pondering the phrase when they film outside a cinema showing Humphrey Bogart in Mark Robson's The Harder They Fall (1956) and we learn that Poiccard is a fan. When Belmondo does the ear tug and the lip rub intuitively, Godard jokes to Seberg that he spotted someone so talented in a film as terrible as Marc Allégret's Un drôle de dimanche (1956).

Michel Fabre (Niko Ravel) and Daniel Boulanger (Baptiste Roussillon) turn up on Day Five to play the cops hunting Poiccard. Godard decides to cast Balducci as a character and upsets Faye by changing his name. He pulls Coutard in a bathchair and berates the newcomers when they miss their cue at the end of an elaborate shot and Coutard jokes that Godard would make an excellent grip if he's not allowed to direct another film.

Unhappy with the staging of a traffic accident on Day Six, Godard has Rivette play the man hit by a car and stays in long shot as Belmondo wanders in to check he's dead. Beauregard is cross that they have wasted money on the stuntman, but Godard is only concerned with the truth. However, he's happy to be distracted the next day, when he hears that Robert Bresson (Aurélien Lorgnier) is shooting Pickpocket (1959) in a nearby Métro station. Amused at being dipped by magician Henri Kassagi (who was on set teaching Martin LaShalle the tricks of the trade), Godard sympathises when Bresson complains that he keeps running into the same people while filming at lowlife locales and frets that it's playing havoc with his sense of realism.

After Day Eight ends abruptly after Godard screws up a piece of paper and drops it into a café bin, the next day proves more productive, as he films a single scene following a discussion with Seberg and Belmondo about whether using quotations is literate or lazy. He insists that revolutionary art is often mistaken for plagiarism and cites T.S. Eliot's views on mature poets stealing lines. Calling another early wrap, he has a drink with Truffaut and Schiffman and wonders when he'll feel free to go into `anything goes' mode. Truffaut reminds him that each film contains five others and this prompts Godard to offer him the role of the man who recognises Poiccard. However, he turns him down because he thought Godard should cast himself and they agree that watching films is much easier than making them.

Calling Coutard, Godard declares himself too sick to work the next day and Beauregard comes storming into Dupont Montparnasse, where the invalid is playing pinball. He raves about the expense of all the wasted hours and dismisses the director's insistence that he works to his own rhythm. As the producer goes to leave, Godard trips him and tries to force him into a brawl, but he stomps off vowing to call the shots from now on. Rissient reads a message to that account to the following morning, but Godard tells everyone to ignore the outside noise and continue on their search for the spontaneous and the unexpected. They seem happy to go along, with even Seberg feeling part of the team, as she quips that an actuality would have live sound when Godard tells a passer-by that he is filming a documentary about two people acting in a drama.

Seberg joins in the applause as Godard walks on his hands in a bar before ribbing him about ripping off William Faulkner when he claims he is paying homage. She teaches Belmondo to dance `The Wooly Bully', as Godard sets up a shot and he collapses on the bed when she jokes that he works the way he does because he can't write a proper script. Such is her involvement that she forgets which tops she has worn in scenes and Faye wishes Godard would take continuity more seriously, as she fears the film will look amateurish. But he assures her that the rules regarding costumes and eyelines won't get him where he wants to go. He has Seberg and Belmondo pull emotive faces in the bathroom mirror, as he shoots in the place he had stayed the first time he came to Paris. That night, Godard writes to Pierre Braunberger and thanks him for not producing À bout de souffle because it has freed him to work on his own terms.

With Seberg and Belmondo tucked up in bed on Day 13, Godard declares that a book shouldn't be adapted for a film and explains how he would shoot the life of Christ. When Belmondo is told to say his favourite Bogart line, Seberg is touched by his choice from Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place (1950): `I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.' She also gives him a smile of encouragement when he shadow boxes in the mirror. Faye is worried the footage won't edit together, but Coutard tells her that the camera loves the stars so much that no one would notice.

At the end of the day, Godard is poring through Faulkner to find the line Seberg had used and is surprised to learn that she had improvised it. She flirts with Belmondo when he has to leave his shirt with Phuong and has to pull herself together when her husband calls to collect her. He turns up again on Day 15, after Beauregard has dragged Godard off to the dentist because he isn't working at 11am because of toothache. Seberg calls it another peculiar interlude and says the same as Moreuil arrives at the Dupont Montparnasse just as she and Belmondo stop dancing the Wooly Bully.

Day 16 brings Godard's cameo and Seberg teases him mercilessly when Phuong powders his face. She sits in the car with Belmondo and fires back JLG aphorisms in his voice after he stiffly peers around his newspaper on a street corner. He takes the ribbing in good part and drapes the paper over her face as she leans over the convertible door to gloat about revolutionary cinema. The next day, they shoot at the airport, where Godard asks Balducci to include in his press profile that he used to steal from his father's surgery (when, in fact, he took his grandmother's rare first editions). He also tells Seberg that she will be interviewing Melville in the scene and, when she asks for some questions, he tells her to make up her own, as Patricia is his alter ego.

A busy day follows, as Godard films the car pulling up with the thugs chasing Poiccard, him staggering to his death, and Patricia running towards him out of breath. As he staggers, Belmondo reassures onlookers that he's making a film, but a gendarme still approachs the cluster gathered around the corpse and Rissient has to shoo him away. But Seberg refuses to follow Godard's order to steal the dead man's wallet and impresses him when she improvises, `Qu'est-ce que c'est, dégueulasse?.' They exchange nods, as everyone around them hugs and she is still angry back at the hotel, as Moreuil reminds her that she is heading to Hollywood to make Philip Leacock's Let No Man Write My Epitaph (1960), which was the sequel to Nicholas Ray's Bogart noir, Knock on Any Door (1949).

Godard still has work to do and poses on the shoulders of three motorcycle cops with Belmondo and Coutard as they film the scene in which Poiccard commits murder. On Day 20, he doesn't even bother to look through the lens, as Belmondo runs past in a field for the final shot. Shrugging at the applause, Godard quotes Leonardo Da Vinci in insisting that art is never finished, but abandoned.

Editors Lila Herman (Pauline Scoupe-Fournier) and Cécile Decugis (Iliana Zabeth) are presented with the footage and they are baffled when Godard demands cuts within the scenes to give the action a jumpy energy. He cites Georges Méliès, Sergei Eisenstein, and Jean Rouch as his inspiration and promises that audiences will be blown away. Beauregard urges him to keep it under 90 minutes and is touched when Godard says he could never work with a producer who wasn't a friend. They watch the first cut, with Truffaut, Chabrol, and Schiffman and Godard is taken aback by the poignancy of Seberg's last line and sits for a moment with his thoughts in the darkness. His companions brand it the worst film of 1960 and he takes a bow, as they applaud and Truffaut comes forward to put a congratulatory arm around his shoulder (as the film freeze-frames). Closing captions sum up the future careers of Belmondo, Seberg, and Godard and note that 162 directors made their debuts during the three-year new wave.

This is a joy. A cinéaste's delight that is stuffed with references to films few will have seen and bon mots that could only have come from the agit-pop Cahiers mavens who challenged the Tradition of Quality and, as a result, changed cinema forever. It helps enormously that Linklater and his team have recreated the look and feel of the period with such fond fidelity. Production designer Katia Wyszkop, costumier Pascaline Chavanne, and cinematographer David Chambille excel, with the latter's high-contrast monochrome imagery evoking a beatnik Paris that was captured so indelibly by those masters of light, Raoul Coutard and Henri Decaë. Like editor Catherine Schwartz, all three have been nominated for Césars, but they have been overlooked by the American Academy, who opted not to recognise Stéphane Batut in the new Best Casting category, even though his unearthing of so many blink-twice lookalikes is nothing short of remarkable.

Zoey Deutch and Aubry Dullin are splendid matches for Seberg and Belmondo. As is Adrien Rouyard for Truffaut, while Antoine Besson makes an amusingly caricatured Chabrol. But the masterstroke is Guillaume Marbeck. who keeps his eyes hidden behind his shades, while nailing both Godard's widow's peak hairline and the nasal intensity that enabled him to be playful and profound (`Disappointments are temporary, film is forever') without quite seeming pompous - at least in this phase of his life. It's so good to see Godard and Truffaut as pals, although it's impossible to forget the desperate denouement described so poignantly in Emmanuel Laurent's Two in the Wave (2010) or the moment Godard callously snubbed Agnès Varda when she came to visit him in Rolle in Faces Places (2017). But it's also nice to see screenwriters Holly Gent, Vincent Palmo, Jr., Michèle Pétin, and Laetitia Masson giving due credit to the likes of Schiffman, Morgenstern, Varda, and Faye, who were often overshadowed by the band of brothers who spent their days tapping away in the smoke-filled office at 146, avenue des Champs-Élysées and their nights in the Cinémathèque française, or wherever else was showing the latest essential picture.

Visual effects artist Alain Carsoux fashioned around 300 shots to help Linklater recreate turn-of-the-decade Paris and therein lies the difference between Nouvelle Vague and À bout de souffle. Everything is meticulously planned in the former, as it has to be in seeking to capture the spontaneity that Godard achieved as much by luck than judgement by being forever open to the possible. Indeed, despite the dialogue being in French, this is very much a traditional Hollywood movie that adheres to linearity and classical storytelling technique. But Linklater sprinkles it with the same self-reflexivity (notably the sublime labelled to-camera portraits of each character) that made the French New Wave so audacious, witty, and influential. The 65 year-old Texan (who wasn't born when the events he depicts were taking place) is the most innovative American director of his generation and this comment on artistic ambition and audience expectation that doubles as a dramatised DVD commentary may well be his masterpiece, even though Dazed and Confused (1993), Before Sunrise (1995), Waking Life (2001), and Boyhood (2014) could all stake a claim. It won't break any box-office records, but this breathless caper will be cherished by anyone besotted with cinema history, as it brings it to life and lets the audience feel part of a magical moment in time.

SAIPAN.

There's more distance between Cork and Barnsley than there is between the Republic of Ireland and the Northern Mariana Islands in Saipan, the latest feature from the husband-and-wife team of Glenn Layburn and Liza Barros D'Sa, who impressed on their previous outings in Cherrybomb (2009), Good Vibrations (2012), and Ordinary Love (2019).

Seeking to reach the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea, Republic of Ireland manager Mick McCarthy (Steve Coogan) finds himself without captain Roy Keane (Éanna Hardwicke) for a play-off in Iran because Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson (Jon Culshaw) refuses to let his injured captain travel. Unable to watch the game on the BBC, Keane walks his dog in the park and sympathises with a little girl in glasses who has been sent off in a kids game for pushing a bigger boy because he doesn't think his coach isn't up to much, either. As Theresa Keane (Harriet Cains) exercises and Fiona McCarthy (Alice Lowe) puts up Christmas decorations, Ireland scrape home on aggregate and Keane is less than impressed with McCarthy's demeanour in the post-match interviews.

A montage follows to the `Fairytale of New York', as McCarthy studies tapes of potential opponents and Keane fights for fitness prior to a pre-tournament training camp on the island of Saipan. He agrees a safety word (`battenberg') with Theresa if he needs to come home and arrives at the Dublin rendezvous with a look of dismay, as his fellow players treat the occasion like a jolly as they board the coach. Infuriated by the jostling of fans and press at the airport, Keane takes McCarthy into the bathroom on the plane to seek reassurances that the squad will work hard in Saipan because he is used to certain standards that he insists others follow. When McCarthy tries to calm him down by mentioning how Jack Charlton had handled matters during Italia 90, Keane scowls that he was English and patronising.

The Irish Football Association already knows that the facilities in Saipan are poor, but have said nothing to McCarthy. During the TV coverage of the five-day stay, it's mentioned that this Northern Mariana island was where Enola Gay took off to bomb Hiroshima. But Keane stays calm, despite the aircon not working in his hotel room, the minibar being filled with hooch, and the breakfast buffet serving cheese sandwiches. Jason McAteer (Oliver Coopersmith) and Niall Quinn (Jack Hickey) laugh it off, but Keane expects better. He also holds his tongue when McCarthy tells a team meeting that the training pitch is in poor condition and that no one remembered to order any footballs.

Having hit the gym, he leaves his teammates to play golf and goes for a run to the training ground. He's appalled to see a goat grazing on the pitch and tracks McCarthy down to the sauna to ask what FAI chief Dickie Moloney (Jamie Beamish) is playing at. McCarthy asks if Keane speaks to Fergie like this and he assures him he always airs his opinions, which brings a wry smile. Aghast that no one has watered the pitch prior to the first training session, Keane sits out a party night at the hotel and looks from his balcony as McCarthy joins a conga.

In truth, the manager is powerless because he has also been let down and he barely keeps his temper during a phone-in with fans from his hotel room because he knows where the buck will stop. When the balls arrive, Keane trains by himself on the tennis court and sits with McCarthy at breakfast to acknowledge that he's spoilt at United and let the others see they're communicating. However, he refuses to engage in small talk, as he tucks into his specially prepared meal.

The truce doesn't last long, however. When the goalkeepers are rested after an hour's work and miss a seven-a-side game, Keane walks off the training pitch and struts down to the beach to think things through. He calls Theresa, only to put the phone down when she answers because he knows World Cups don't come around every day. Radio phone-ins reveal the divided opinion back home, while the other players try to lighten the mood in the hope the skipper will calm down.

Waiting on the hotel steps for McCarthy to return from a late-night cycle ride, Keane informs him he wants to go home, as he's had enough. When his manager insists he's doing his best, Keane snaps back that he should be striving to be better before stalking off with a throwaway remark about his disillusion being nothing personal. Noticing a giant cut-out of Keane's face in a hotel skip, McCarthy calls up Colin Healy on the phone and wonders how to break the news of his captain's defection to the press. Summoned to Keane's room, McCarthy refuses to beg him to return and simply asks if he wants to play. When he doesn't reply, McCarthy walks away and Keane accuses him of weak management and shrugs off Moloney's reminder that the country is depending on him, as he never asked to have the team depend on him so heavily.

With the press snooping around the hotel bar, McCarthy tells a reporter off the record that Keane hasn't fought to stay in the squad. He even ignores Fergie's advice to hang in there because the cause is hopeless. Yet he's forced to remain overnight, as he can't get a flight out of Saipan. Meanwhile, the media is having a field day back home (with the Internet playing its part for the first time). Having slept on a beach bed, however, Keane changes his mind and decides to stay. Assistant Mick Byrne (Peter McDonald) urges McCarthy to speak to his skipper, after Moloney reveals that he cancelled the team sheet that his manager had sent to FIFA without Keane's name on it. Nettled by the news that Fergie had talked him round and that the FAI just want McCarthy to handle Keane for two weeks, he can't bring himself to knock on his door and both he and Keane play the episode down in press conferences, while stressing that they only want the best for the team.

Taking the joke when he's served cheese sarnies for breakfast, Keane trains hard with the lads, but opts out of their banana boat ride. He has nothing to do with McCarthy during the session, as a reporter claims that Keane had said `I get like that sometimes' over his decision to quit. At a food bar that night, however, he speaks to a journalist (Aoife Hinds) whose banner story is delivered to McCarthy at the end of the final Saipan press conference and he calls Fiona before calling a team meeting. Keane imagines Theresa telling him to apologise and keep his mouth shut.

He fails spectacularly when McCarthy silences a karaoke and pizza session to ask Keane if he has anything to say about the interview he has given. Keane wants to know why the conversation isn't taking place in private, but McCarthy reminds him that he was the one to go public with his thoughts on his teammates. Some try to intervene, but Keane refuses to be placated after McCarthy asks why he missed Quinn's testimonial and the qualifier in Iran. Furious at having his integrity challenged, Keane accuses McCarthy of being a liar in search of an exit strategy because he has messed up the preparations and coaxed the squad into accepting that making up the numbers is an achievement in itself. Calling McCarthy's Irishness and talent into question, Keane spews out that he doesn't rate him as a player, a manager, or a person and departs with the much-quoted line about missing the World Cup, `You can stick it up your bollocks.'

Quinn and skipper Steve Staunton voice their disappointment and their support for the manager at the press conference in which McCarthy announces that he has sent Keane home for unacceptable levels of abuse during the team meeting. After a sleepless night, the midfielder queues for his flight surrounded by reporters. A montage shows TV news items about the story and the divided opinion among Irish fans. Former player Eamon Dunphy, however, supports Keane's contention that the Republic should stop turning up for tournaments for the craic and prepare like proper contenders. In Tokyo, the squad watches Keane being interviewed for RTÉ in a 1960s retro green shirt about his conscience being clear and McCarthy winces as he comments on his journeyman career. But, despite a private jet being on standby, no recall is forthcoming and, following a phone call from McCarthy asking if he had changed his mind, Keane is left to walk his dog and kick balls into the small goal net in his back garden, as the Republic progress from the group stage (drawing with Germany), only to lose to Spain on penalties in the Round of 16.

Clips of the real Keane and McCarthy run during the closing credits, which also include photographs of the men in good and bad times.

But this isn't really a film about football - it's about leadership, wounded male pride, levels of talent and expectation, and the impact that varying degrees of Irishness has had on national identity in the Celtic Tiger era. Brian O'Flaherty and Tyrone Unger's documentary, Jack Charlton: The Irish Years (2005), puts the story in context, even opening with some wise words from former goalkeeper, Albert Camus: `What I know most surely about morality and the duty of man I owe to football.'

In international terms, Mick McCarthy was more successful than Roy Keane, as he played and managed at a World Cup. Domestically, however, Keane was a superstar, while McCarthy was a journeyman - although the Cork man would discover a grudging respect for his Barnzolian adversary when he tried his hand at management and learned at first hand what managing the Republic of Ireland entails when he served as Martin O'Neill's assistant between 2013-18. Only then would he have seen the way in which the FAI run the ship that he had been so determined to hole below the waterline in Saipan. He was right to expect arrangements to have been made with due diligence before such a major tournament, but he should also have realised that McCarthy didn't have the same clout that Sir Alex Ferguson had at Old Trafford and should have addressed his remarks to the men in suits not the poor sod in shorts, whose own heart must have sunk when he saw how badly he had been let down by the bosses who would blame him for any under-performance at the tournament.

Keane's antipathy towards McCarthy dated back to a 1992 encounter when the 20 year-old had been late for a bus and had responded to the question, `Where's your professional pride?' with the jibe, `Where's your first touch?' As McCarthy was only a senior pro who hadn't bothered to get to know him rather than an authority figure, Keane had resented being chewed out in front of his teammates by someone he felt shouldn't be pulling on a green shirt because he was English and wasn't up to international standard. However, the FAI hadn't earned its `Find an Englishman' nickname for nothing and McCarthy was one of many caps who had qualified through family connections. Keane resented these Plastic Paddies, but they had transformed the nation's footballing fortunes under Jack Charlton, who had been adopted by most fans as an honorary Éireannach. But screenwriter Paul Fraser doesn't feel the need to lay this groundwork and, as a consequence, Saipan often struggles to make a drama out of a crisis.

The stand-off between McCarthy and Keane has been described as `the most important unimportant event' in recent Irish history. Certainly, the vox pops dropped into the action at various points underline how the row divided opinion. But little sense is given of the Ireland the team was representing or the bond between the people and the squad. Although he's shown scoring in the closing clips, striker Robbie Keane was just as important to the Republic's chances as his namesake. Yet he doesn't merit a mention in the scenes featuring the likes of Niall Quinn and Jason McAteer. Perhaps the makers were keen to avoid confusion, but it's difficult to gauge the squad dynamic or the extent to which Roy Keane was liked or merely tolerated by teammates who felt his talent made up for his temperament. Perhaps Layburn and Barros D'Sa should have followed through on Quinn's efforts following a friendly in Hiroshima to broker a deal after winger David Connolly had mentioned that several players wanted Keane to return?

It doesn't help, either, that the excellently intense Éanna Hardwicke doesn't look anything like Keane, apart from his cropped hair, and never quite nails the mannerisms or speech patterns that have become familiar from Keane's punditry career. A profile two-shot during the climactic set-to similarly jars because McCarthy is two inches taller than Keane, while Hardwicke has a three-inch advantage over Coogan. Thus, even though the imbalance could be used to suggest that the player is gaining the upper hand over his manager, it reinforces the impression that authenticity matters less than atmosphere. Coogan's failure to replicate McCarthy's Yorkshire burr also frustrates, as he is such a noted mimic (although Jon Culshaw's telephone Fergie isn't up to much, either). To a degree, Coogan is miscast, as he doesn't feel like a gnarled ex-pro who has had to scrap in order to prove his worth. An emotional man, McCarthy comes across as someone who accepts his limitations, but is nobody's fool and that ego gets lost in rather patronising scenes like the one in which he chats to his wife on the phone about Ronseal's new array of fence colours. The template for this kind of role is Michael Sheen's Brian Clough in The Damned United (2009), as he opted for enough of an impersonation to reassure viewers that he understood his character. Despite the coy interchanges with Alice Lowe (which are well-matched by Hardwicke's rapport with Harriet Cains), Coogan never inhabits Mick McCarthy in the same way, as a man who lives and breathes football and is beggared if he is going to allow a spoilt talisman to question his eligibility or his commitment to the cause.

Another miscalculation reduces the FAI bigwigs to blundering buffoons for comic effect, as this makes McCarthy look weak for failing to take them to task when he is every bit as frustrated by the lack of equipment as Keane, but opts to show the respect that the skipper feels is due to him before any berk in a blazer. These may be small details, but they add up to undermine the film's validity. Merging Paul Kimmage of The Sunday Independent and Tom Humphries of The Irish Times into a single, ill-defined female reporter makes sense as a dramatic choice, as it simplifies a complicated piece of journalistic skullduggery. But the change also muddies the waters when it comes to understanding what provisos Keane had agreed before saying his piece and why he spoke so condemnatorily to the press after he had decided to stay and play.

Clearly, Saipan is a drama not a documentary. But the blurred lines and blatant liberties obscure the truth and, thus, do a disservice to both Keane and McCarthy, as well as the audience. The showdown is admirably played, with McCarthy's accusation that Keane had feigned injury before the Iran game coming as a bolt out of the blue when the fissure was still remediable, as both men recognise that the preparations could and and should have been better. But once Keane senses that his boss has made a tactical error, he seizes on it and lets 12 years of pent-up bile come spewing out. Each succeeding in tempering seething loathing with ingrained dignity, Coogan and Hardwicke convey the sadness that McCarthy and Keane must have felt at seeing their shared dream crumble in the face of macho egotism. It also comes across in Keane's unterview with RTÉ's Tommie Gorman, in which he was more conciliatory than he had been while speaking to the Mail on Sunday.

McCarthy had watched this on Japanese television at 4:30am after having backed Quinn's efforts to coax Keane into agreeing to play with a clean slate. Aware of the public mood in Ireland, he had told reporters that `the call has got to come from Roy'. But the call never came and the film is more than a little disingenuous in inventing the scene in which McCarthy phones Keane to be met by silence. In fact, he had decided to stick with his decision after reading the full transcript of the Gorman interview and Quinn had told his teammates that they had to back the manager. Yet, even then, McCarthy was willing to let Keane return if agent Michael Kennedy (and Sir Alex) had managed to persuade him to swallow his pride. This makes a much better story than all the stuff about cheese butties, safety words, peeling paintwork, and banana boats.