Acclaimed filmmaker Paul Duane celebrates his favourite Irish cult movie classics...
NOVEMBER AFTERNOON (Directors John Carney and Tom Hall, 1996)
What is it? A story of two couples getting together in Dublin over a holiday weekend, made in black and white with a jazz soundtrack and a sexually frank storyline that portrays incestuous desire as pretty hot stuff before dropping the audience into the realisation that it’s an ambiguously abusive relationship. It’s like a French New Wave movie, but in '90s Dublin, and its breezy confidence puts it way ahead most of its contemporaries. Nice cameo by a young Camille O’Sullivan as a jazz singer.
Why is it important? As I remember a friend saying at the time it came out, "It’s great to see Irish middle-class people making films about Irish middle-class people," a genre that is still pretty thin nearly thirty years later. Plus it’s an Irish movie where the characters are unashamedly horny for each other, and the performances are so good you absolutely see why they’re like that. It’s loose, cool, boozy, sexy and jazzy – adjectives not often applied to Irish cinema.
How did it get made? Rather than going the usual route of making short films then a feature, the directors decided to go straight to feature length – a very ambitious decision in '90s Ireland. First they tried to make a road movie, but found it too logistically complex and opted instead to make a small interior film with few characters, influenced by Cassavetes and Bergman. They were young – 19 and 23 – and resourceful, shooting with the best equipment available to them, a Hi-8 videocamera, choosing b&w as the most forgiving approach and casting actors they already knew. Funded by a small bank loan, they filmed at night in a Ringsend dance studio that was being used for band rehearals in the daytimes.
and its breezy confidence puts it way ahead most of its contemporaries.'
How did it go down? After securing an Irish Film Board loan to complete the film, they blew it up to 16mm for festival screenings (the print broke the second time it was shown, at the Dublin Film Festival). Nevertheless it was enthusiastically covered in the Irish Times, and mentioned among their Films of the Year. It was also broadcast on RTÉ2.
What should have happened? A small, thematically ambitious film that looked to US indie cinema and European arthouse as its antecedents could have set off a new wave of Irish cinema – especially coinciding as it did with the re-establishment of the Irish Film Board.
What happened instead? The directors made a similarly intriguing and ambitious film, Park, then created the highly successful RTÉ series Bachelor’s Walk before going their separate ways. John Carney has had notable success making music-based features internationally, Tom Hall made the dark and edgy feature Sensation and continues to work in feature and TV drama. They plan to re-unite in the not too distant future, however…
Where can I see it? Currently impossible to see, due to music rights issues. The Irish Film Archive supplied me with a viewing copy.
Images courtesy of the Irish Film Archive. Enjoy more Irish Cult Movie Classics here.
