Film Review: ‘Closer’ to absurdity than reality

By Michael Gray"The Closer You Get," by Uberto Pasolini and Aileen Ritchie, running in the New York area from Feb. 25, and nationwide from March 15.

There’s no foolproof formula when it comes to making a megahit indie film, and when producers try to follow the blueprint of a proven winner they rarely get it right. Unpredictable factors like the acting chemistry of a starless cast, the timing of the film’s launch on the public, and blind luck come into play when a film of modest scale catches the world’s imagination and makes loads of money. For every ‘Waking Ned Devine’ and ‘The Full Monty’ there’s a stack of independent videos in the bargain bin that failed dismally at the box office.

But the long odds against repeat success don’t stop people from trying, and ‘The Full Monty’ producer Uberto Pasolini revisits in his latest film the theme of provincial menfolk embarking on a daft scheme to improve their lovelife.

Working with first-time director Aileen Ritchie, Pasolini shifts locale from England’s northeast to Ireland’s northwest for "The Closer You Get," a Ned meets Monty hybrid set in Donegal, and shot in Kincasslagh.

This alleged comedy features a motley group of forlorn men hoping to win the romance sweepstakes by advertising in the Miami Herald personals page for women to accompany them to the upcoming St Martha’s Day dance. The village in which they live, Kilvara, is quaint, naturally, but short of women, and the lads don’t appreciate the few eligible females in their midst. With only a month to get ready, from the placement of their ad to the much-anticipated dance, the bachelors groom themselves, take a little exercise, and accessorize their wardrobes. They cut back on the pints to lose the belly and appear more attractive to the opposite sex, and even roll on some deodorant.

The women in the village weather out this foolishness with sunny dispositions, and get their own back by snogging with Spanish sailors from the trawlers that pull in to the harbor from time to time. With grim predictability and few laughs along the way, this parade of hopeless galoots comes to realize that the Miami brides may never arrive and that the women of the village will suit them just fine.

And they all live happy ever after.

Disregarding the fact that nobody in Donegal or anywhere else erects a dance marquee to celebrate the feast day of the patron saint of servants and cooks (if that’s St. Martha’s constituency, these old-fashioned Irish lads may have domestic duties in mind more than amore for the American lassies if they ever show up), the filmmakers present us with a fake version of Ireland that shows a poor understanding of Irish rural life and fails to convince on any level. These average joes, butcher Kieran (Ian Hart), sheep farmer Ian (Sean McGinley) and pub-owner Pat (Ewan Stewart) are far from credible, despite their ordinariness. Are we really expected to believe that a group of self-employed adult males, in present-day Ireland, would skulk in the bushes and hide behind turf ricks near the village bus-stop in the hope that glamorous Floridians would arrive on the bus in response to their ad?

In the movie, these guys get about in Ford pickup trucks. In the real world they’d take their 4 wheel drives for a spin to the seaside resorts of Buncrana or Bundoran to shake a leg at the discos there if they felt the need for romance. That’s if they could tear themselves away from Premier League soccer matches on satellite TV long enough to think about ladies.

The filmmakers could have solved most of the film’s problems by turning the clock back 50 years to make a period piece of it. Back then, the isolation and depopulation of rural Ireland might have made this story very real, and we’d have a comedy version of Pat O’Connor’s "Ballroom Of Romance" to look at instead of this hilarity-free timewarp.

But these would-be rustic Romeos are languishing in a fictitious low-tech present that wastes the talents of lead actors Ian Hart and Niamh Cusack and asks too much of its lesser actors. Liverpudlian Hart hasn’t put a foot wrong in an eight year cinema career that saw him transform himself so completely for his roles — many of them Irish, and as diverse as Uncle Alo in "The Butcher Boy," the psychotic loyalist gunslinger Ginger in "Nothing Personal," and Collin’s batman in "Michael Collins" — that cinema audiences can be forgiven both for thinking that he’s from Ireland and for not recognising him from one role to the next.

At least Hart and Cusack get the Donegal accent right, even if English screenwriter William Ivory gives them little to work with in the way of dialogue. U.S. and British actors take a lot of flak off Irish people for getting Irish accents wrong, but Irish actors often fare just as badly when it comes to getting regional differences right. To seem like they really belong in this isolated village, hermetically sealed off from the rest of the world, would it kill Limerick comedian Pat Shortt, half of the comedy duo "D’Unbelievables," and Sean McGinley to at least try to sound like they’re local?

Shortt plays the local plumber Ollie, a gormless idiot who is perpetually nervous about his lack of experience with women. McGinley plays the dim-witted sheep farmer who pines after the pub owner’s wife, Kate (Niamh Cusack) but can’t find the words to tell her what he really feels. Bizarrely, he is encouraged by the local priest (a walking cliche dispenser played by Risteárd Cooper), to express his love for this married woman over the church PA system. A padre from a parallel universe, perhaps, but not in the real world. The commercial failure of "The Matchmaker" might have nailed the lid on the coffin for this kind of outmoded paddywhackery, but the surprise success of "Waking Ned Devine," and on TV, "Ballykissangel" showed there was still some life in the old corpse.