Ailsa

Miles Butler wanders around a rainy Dublin like an infinitely sad, self-pitying Lloyd Cole. His low-key voice hovers over images saturated with colour, where only glimpses of people are seen. Light, shadows, colour and composition are emphasized instead of people. A dreamy kind of realism, where the personality is allowed to roam free and the events only exist in the memory of the main character.
An uneventful relationship run by the alarm-clock andtediousthe dansantes is suddenly interrupted when Miles becomes the witness of a tragedy. The landlord has been electrocuted in his bath -an almost over-explicit irony-and has been found dead in his apartment. Several months later a beautiful woman moves in. The fate ofthe apartment and the man's obsession with the mysterious Campbell Rourke lead him on to a dangerous course. He becomes obsessed by her and doesn't notice how his relationship with Sara slowly dissolves. When on top of ita II heisfiredfrom his job at the office of genealogical research, where heworksasacalligrapher, heplunges into self-pity. He takes his anxiety out on his girlfriend, and he soon finds himself homeless.
Miles is a voyeur with an inclination that differs from your avery film. The cliche of using binoculars and video for surveilance is exchanged for the written
word. There are no one-liners in this film, instead it becomes one long confessional letter. He looks into somebody else's life without ever giving himself away, and still he longs to enter, to become elated by life and love. He is prepared for his discovery in the same way as a victim prepares himself forthe ritual, however when the executioner does not show, his life becomes meaningless. Ailsa is Paddy Breathnach's debut feature and belongs together with a numberof Irish films premiered during the last couple of years. Still, the tone is morewhispering and the social engagement of, for example, Alan Parker's The Commitments is only present in the sub-text. Still, this isa portrayal of an Irish society that wishes to make a break with the past. Joseph O'Connor's screenplay has its roots in a generation that grew up in the 70's, which makes it more appealing than the screenplays by Ireland's number one writer, Roddy Doyle, who is morethan anything referring tothe 60's.
The cinematographer Cian de Buitlear's remarkably beautiful and consequent choice of colours adds to the almost documentarystyle of the film. Puttogether with Breatnach, with his documentary roots, the film which could have been a pretentious love story turns into a something with the vitality of a Lloyd Cole song.

Medverkande
Brendan Coyle, Andrea Irvin, Juliette Gruber, Darragh Kelly: Producent
Ed Guiney: Manus
Joseph O'Connor: Foto
Cian de Buitlear: Musik
Dario Marianelli: Talat språk
English