The Crying Game

Jody, a British soldier, is kept hostage by the IRA. Fergus, who guards him, is a gentle soul. The two men develop a kind of friendship. Before the IRA is to execute
him, Jody is killed in an accident. To fullfil Jody's last wish, Fergus goes to London and looks up Dil, a nightclub singer. To the IRA Fergus is a deserter and they begin a search for him. In addition Dil's ex-boyfriend Dave is out to make trouble.

Comment:
The Irish director and writer Neil Jordan has returned to his filmic homeland in Ireland after a detour to Hollywood. This homecoming from the big production com'' panies of the dream factory, to the small British independent Palace Pictures first resulted in The Miracle and most recently in The Crying Game. In the latter he also goes back to the same London settings that he portrayed in the acclaimed Mona Lisa.
The Crying Game is a contemporary film with highly contemporary themes and questions about man's tendency to cling to fragile illusions that, upon closer scrutiny, turn out to be totally wrong. Just as in Neil Jordan's Company of Wolves the characters of the film time after time find out that things are not always what they appear to be at first, while the audience is driven from one extreme to the other throughout the film.
The story begins in an amusement park
in northern Ireland, among happy laughs and frantic partying that suddenly turns
into a hostage drama. In the way typical of his films, Neil Jordan twists and turns our general conventions and preconceived ideas around. What at first looks like one in the row of dramatic narratives about the inflamed never-ending conflict between the Irish and the British, develops into a love story in the entertainment area of London.
Stephen Rea, who had the main part in Jordan's first film Angel, is the IRA terrorist Fergus who paradoxically happens to be friendly and full of human warmth; a quality which puts his life to danger. Miranda Richardson plays the part of the militant and temperamental IRA woman Jude, who unlike Fergus takes her task with dead seriousness.
The Crying Game portrays people's attempts at finding their own innermost feelings and their own true nature, regardless of the views on right and wrong prevailing in the society they live in. Despite a number of diametrically opposed conditions and backgrounds, the characters in The Crying Game manage to traverse ethnic as well as physical barriers in their striving for love and friendship.
Thomas Rynell

Medverkande
Stephen Rea, Jaye Davidson, Adrian Dunbar: Producent
Stephen Woolley: Manus
Neil Jordan: Foto
Ian Wilson: Musik
Anne Dudley: Talat språk
English