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MARCH 2005

Film Tunes Into Irish Music:
The Boys and Girl From County Clare

By Jan Aaron

St. Patrick’s day salutes Ireland’s rich heritage, which includes the traditional toe-tapping Ceili music highlighted in The Boys and Girl from County Clare. In Nicholas Adams’ screenplay, a Ceili music competition fuels up the old resentments and smoldering rivalry between two long-feuding brothers who’ve gone their separate ways.

Director John Irvin starts his film with grainy black and white footage of three boys toe-tapping along while learning Ceili music, which is supposed to set the stage for an age-old sibling rivalry.  The story shifts to the late 1960s when the Beatles are taking the world and groups of Ceili musicians are invading a small, picturesque Irish town, hosting an important music competition. Among the rivals are Jimmy (Colm Meaney) and John Joe (Bernard Hill), two of the three youngsters, now grown men, reliving their old resentments.

Jimmy left town 20 years ago for Liverpool, five marriages and the life of a successful businessman, leaving his brother to tend the family’s farm. Now in County Clare, their rivalries and resentments resurface. Unease between Jimmy and John Joe builds on their past relationships to Maisie (Charlotte Bradley), the pianist in the latter’s band. Caught in the middle are Jimmy’s ace flutist Teddy (Shaun Evans) and Joe’s star fiddler, Anne (Andrea Corr of the Irish pop band, The Corrs), whose budding affair creates all kinds of anxieties in her mother. Both young actors are standouts in this film. Meaney’s raunchy mouthed Irishman plays well against Hill’s soft edged sadness, especially as they reconcile their differences. A third brother makes a surprise visit.

While set up as the dramatic heart of the film, the music competition comes and goes with surprisingly little fanfare, leaving grudges and past traumas unresolved. The film deals with these sensitivities after the competition in a tender and gratifying way.

Star billing also should go to the remote, unspoiled locations on the Isle of Man and in Northern Ireland, which stood in for the West. Cinematography by Thomas Burstyn and period production design by Tom McCullagh make everything look appropriate and appealing. (PG-13; 90 minutes) #

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