The best thing about Girls & Boys is one of the main characters is trans and absolutely no one blinks an eye at this. This is not something that could be said when I ran around Dublin, back when just being a member of the gay student clubs was an act of great bravery and being trans almost beyond imagining. Here it’s just another ordinary part of life, and this is so delightful to see it’s just such a shame what’s on offer here isn’t more cleverly done.
It’s Halloween, which in Dublin is an excuse for mischief as wild as anything Detroit ever had to offer, but the kids from Trinity College (aka Ireland’s Harvard) fancy themselves a cut above. A group of rugby lads, including Jace (Adam Lunnon-Collery) end up at a warehouse party where a group of art students, including Charlie (Liath Hannon), are holding court. Jace and Charlie are in smoker’s alley making awkward chitchat when the party is raided, which sends them out onto the streets of the night city together looking for their next good time. So far so Before Sunrise, In Search of a Midnight Kiss, Stay the Night, Medicine for Melancholy, Strangers by Night, Before We Go, only this time a sexual connection isn’t the headline item on the agenda. Comparisons to TV smash Normal People are also obvious except these two are a lot less articulate. And yet Charlie is so used to people objectifying her that she doesn’t really know what a proper relationship feels like, and Jace is a bit more sensitive than the stereotypical rugby jock. So they’re both unsure of themselves, both unsure the other is going to properly understand them, and both on the defensive for reasons they don’t quite understand. Well, Charlie understands. Jace does not.
Their adventures are fairly tame, but where writer-director Donnacha Gilmore really fell down was making the dialogue feel largely improvised. A lot of times the kids just don’t have all that much to say to each other, and while the circular talk and the uming-and-ahing is very true to life, it’s not always the most amusing to watch. By the time the big secret is revealed things feel a little tired, and the impact of the revelation is more muted thank it should have been. Thanks largely to Mr. Lunnon-Collery’s adorable performance Jace has already been revealed as one of life’s good guys, so it’s also not like he has to do any personal re-evaluation on the level of Timocin Ziegler’s unpleasant cop in Till the End of the Night. Ms. Hannon has both the easier and the harder part of waiting for everybody else to catch up to her, but her self-contained calmness is an interesting center for the entire film, and one which mitigates some of the stereotypes being teased out here.
Fionnuala McCormack’s smeary cinematography makes a rainy night in Dublin a palpable thing, and Josh Reichental’s score emphasises the emotional connection between the two core characters. The soundtrack is largely new Irish acts, the kind the characters would be listening to, and the story is as firmly grounded in its city as any of the other out-all-night movies mentioned above are. It was released in Irish cinemas in September and did well for a small indie with a smaller budget, but it’s largely only playing the festival circuit elsewhere in the world thanks to the weaknesses of the script. This is Mr. Gilmore’s first feature film though he’s made several shorts, and now he has this under his belt it’s certain his next one will be much better.
Girls & Boys recently played at the Irish Film Festival.
Learn more about the film at the IMDB site for the title.
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