2013
was not a vintage year for Irish film. There were some exceptions of
course but a small handful of films aside, the quality was down on
2012 which was an excellent year. It is an odd thing in a lot of ways
exclusively reviewing Irish films. You really want them to be good
and when they are not, you do not want to kick them around and hurt
their chances to get wider distribution. At the same time you do not
want to over-hype a film and disappoint an audience. This has been
the case in the past and nothing makes an already sceptical audience
even more tentative when approaching the next ‘great’ Irish film.
All that can be done is to be fair, if you do not like something, say
so but crucially explain why. It sounds simple but it is not done as
much as it should be. So as I approached my first film of 2014 I was
hoping for something to give me that feeling of optimism, something
to make me think that 2014 could be our year. My first film of 2014
was Shaun Ryan’s Limp and if this is the standard that is
being set it looks like being a fine year indeed.
Limp
tells the story of Mr. Grot (Eoin Quinn) who lives the most solitary
of lives. Seemingly permanently in his own head, his days seem
punctuated with whatever fantasy he can concoct. We can tell early on
that something is very wrong. The pulsing soundtrack (take a bow
Chris Zabriskie) accompanies Mr. Grot on a shopping expedition to
some women’s clothes shops. Of course he could be buying a present
for his wife or girlfriend but something in the way he touches the
dresses make you suspect he is not. It is this moment early on in the
film that is key to the success of Eoin Quinn in the central role.
Calm and quiet but silently screaming, the curdling loneliness and
flashes of anger flit across his face every so often. He comes home
after buying a dress and director Ryan shows his confidence with a
superb long take in which we discover the full horror of Mr. Grots
living arrangements.
It is
not a spoiler to say that Mr Grot has a dead woman in his apartment.
A former co-worker Catherine (Anne Gill) has been missing for a while
and while we do not see what happened to her we do see the aftermath.
That in a nutshell is where the power of Limp resides. It is a
kind of horror film but not gruesome in the slightest. It is about
the horror of decay, be it spiritual, mental or physical. It leaves
so much to the imagination, forcing your mind to turn over the
possible details. We see scenes either real or imagined from Mr.
Grot’s point of view. These have a nightmarish and hallucinatory
quality. This gives an insight to the growing sickness in Mr. Grot's
mind. There is a genuine question that takes shape midway through the
film. Will the ‘happy’ couple reside in the apartment until
someone comes knocking or will Mr. Grot make a decision that will
change everything.
There
are a couple of minor problems with Limp. The first one is
that the film is only about an hour long. I have no idea if this will
make distribution more difficult but I hope not as it is a film that
deserves a proper release. I also have a problem with some of the
names in the film. The name Mr. Grot could have been a little less on
the nose. I also could live the rest of my life without seeing
working class ‘scumbags’ being called Anto and Jacinta.
Filmmakers, working class people have other names, they do not all
end with a vowel. But these are minor quibbles.
Shaun
Ryan has assembled a fine film here. There is even a series of scenes
not obviously connected to the main narrative that are revealed to be
not quite what you think they are. For this I applaud the filmmaker.
He has obviously watched enough horror films to know that the power
of them lives in the lack of information given. Limp is more
of a mood piece than a classical horror narrative and is all the
better for it. The two main actors give fine performances with Quinn
in particular an uneasy presence. The film is scratchy and nervous
just like its lead character. Limp is a very good calling card
on what looks like quite a low budget. I for one look forward to what
he does next.
