Ballywalter
Prasanna Puwanarajah’s Irish comedy-drama is modestly presented but is not without ambition.
Prasanna Puwanarajah is of Sri Lankan Tamil stock, was born in Ipswich and lives in London but he feels a natural fit for this film set in the small town in County Down, Northern Ireland, which provides the title. Puwanarajah, already well established as an actor, is here making his feature film directorial debut and is working from a screenplay by Stacey Gregg who, in contrast, is on home ground having been born in Belfast. Also Irish are the two leading players Séana Kerslake and Patrick Kielty and, although the story involves plenty of subsidiary characters, Ballywalter often feels like an engaging two-hander - that’s due to Eileen and Shane, the roles taken by Kerslake and Kielty, being so very much the central focus but also because the two of them perform so well together.
If I say that Ballywalter feels like a little film, that is not meant as a criticism. Rather it is in keeping with the film’s adoption of a tone that never seems heavy (as witness the music score by Niall Lawlor) even though under the surface it is dealing with troubled lives. In Eileen’s case that involves her return to her hometown having failed to fulfil her hopes as a student in London and then facing up to losing a boyfriend who has proved unreliable. We find her getting by with work in a coffee shop while also temporarily driving her ex-boyfriend's taxi cab. If quirky comments by her passengers supply comic touches, we are also aware without the point being rammed home that she is drinking too much. Furthermore, by featuring a series of short scenes depicting what Eileen’s daily routine has become, the film captures well the sense of a life lacking in any real satisfaction.
As for Shane, he meets Eileen through becoming a weekly passenger in her taxi when he hires her to take him between Ballywalter and Belfast, the latter being the place where he has signed up for a twelve-week course in the art of stand-up comedy. He is not talented in that direction but has taken this on as a challenge, something on which to focus since, although he had married, he is now coping alone following a tragedy for which he himself was responsible.
Ballywalter is not afraid to reference names with a certain intellectual cachet (Samuel Beckett, Sylvia Plath, Colm Tóibín) but it has an unpretentious tone despite juggling with two themes. The first of these is the underlying despair in many people’s lives while the second stems from the many scenes devoted to the classes attended by Shane in which comedy is discussed and analysed. The former aspect seems set to be a persuasive illustration of how valuable a platonic bond can be (the repeated journeys to and from Belfast cause Shane and Eileen to confide in each other thereby creating a closeness despite Shane being twenty or so years older). The other element leads to a climax when Shane and the other members of the class give an actual end-of-course performance. This side of the film comes to concentrate on the belief that comedy can be more valuable if it embraces truths that are disturbing to the performer and sometimes to the audience too. It may well be that it is by chance that this material is very close to that which Trevor Griffiths made central in his 1975 stage play Comedians which dealt with it in greater depth The parallel continues in that Ballywalter obtains impressively serious acting from Patrick Kielty, a performer not previously known for that, just as the original production of Comedians won high acclaim for the comic Jimmy Jewel’s fine straight performance.
However, for me Ballywalter, having worked well on its own terms for much of its length, does seem less well judged as it reaches its climax. The film winds up both of its threads in ways that seem less persuasive or less apt than what has gone before. Others may find these concluding scenes both more touching and more uplifting than I did, but at least there's no doubt that Kerslake and Kielty can be well pleased with their efforts.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Séana Kerslake, Patrick Kielty, Conor MacNeill, Joanne Crawford, Julian Moore-Cook, Paul Mallon, Lloyd Hutchinson, Ryan McParland, Chris Corrigan, Abigail McGibbon, Cillian Lenaghan.
Dir Prasanna Puwanarajah, Pro James Bierman and Nick Bower, Screenplay Stacey Gregg, Ph Federico Cesca, Pro Des Tom Bowyer, Ed Sarah Brewerton and Mark Towns, Music Niall Lawlor, Costumes Susan Scott.
Empire Street Productions/Riverstone Pictures/Cowtown Pictures-Elysian Film Group Distribution and Break Out Pictures.
90 mins. Ireland/UK. 2022. UK Rel: 22 September 2023. Cert. 15.
