Lakelands
The story of a footballer who suffers a head injury, this Irish drama showcases much promising talent both in front of and behind the camera.
Éanna Hardwicke
These are great times for Irish cinema. It's striking in itself that two major movies of recent times were filmed there (Belfast and The Banshees of Inisherin) and that young Irish actors such as Paul Mescal and Barry Keoghan have already achieved international acclaim. But, no less encouragingly, recent years have seen the emergence of a whole series of smaller Irish pictures which have pulled above their weight. One thinks, for example, of the films of Frank Berry (Michael Inside and Aisha) or of Rialto with its outstanding performance from Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, while the documentary Young Plato by Neasa Ní Chianáin and Declan McGrath has become a favourite film of mine. But perhaps the most exceptional impact by a small Irish film of real quality is to be found in the Oscar-nominated Colm Bairéad picture The Quiet Girl in which both Carrie Crowley and the child actress Catherine Clinch were magnificent.
It is in this context that one greets Lakelands which immediately adds four new names to the list of Irish artists to watch. This is a work that has been most astutely cast and which presents as its lead players Éanna Hardwicke and Danielle Galligan who work together beautifully. Quite understandably the two of them shared the Bingham Ray New Talent Award at the Galway Film Fleadh in 2022. However, it is no less significant that Robert Higgins and Patrick McGivney carried off the feature film award at that same event while also winning for best narrative feature at that year’s Kerry Film Festival. Indeed, their achievement is all the greater because, although Lakelands is their first feature film, they are credited in three capacities: as its directors, producers and writers.
To debut with such confidence in this way is the more remarkable because Higgins and McGivney have set out to tell a story very much rooted in everyday life. They display the courage of their convictions by resisting any temptation to build up a story in an artificial way. The central figure here is a young man, Cian Reilly (that’s Hardwicke's role). He works on a dairy farm run by his father (Lorcan Cranitch), a man not given to praise, but Cian is content with his existence. That's all the more so because Cian has a passion in life, that being Gaelic football. He plays regularly for the local team coached by Bernie (Gary Lydon) and enjoys drinking and partying with the other players, especially his closest friends who include Sparky (Dafhyd Flynn).
Lakelands, photographed in colour and widescreen by Simon Crowe, captures admirably both the locality and the life-style of Cian himself. Many younger male viewers will readily identify with him and with the situation in which he soon finds himself. It so happens that Cian becomes the victim of a street attack at night that leaves him with a head injury. It means that he must take time off from the game to recover but it takes longer than expected and there is talk of concussion and its impact. We are allowed to see that for Cian his involvement in sport is very much part of his male identity, a fact that encourages him to get back into the game regardless of how he is feeling.
The other key figure in Lakelands is Grace (Danielle Galligan) who has just returned to Ireland after having lived abroad for some eight years. She had been close to Cian before her departure and, having come back to look after her ailing father, she resumes their old friendship. This provides the film with its other central thread. Hardwicke and Galligan capture admirably the affinity felt by these two and as Grace seeks to advise and help, we wonder if the film will unusually offer a telling portrait of a platonic friendship. Grace has revealed earlier that she has a boyfriend in London but, while that cuts across the likelihood of this becoming a conventional love story, the film does make you feel that the two of them should be together. Lakelands for all its qualities plays as a small film and it is perhaps debatable whether or not in the second half Higgins and McGivney should have increased the dramatic edge in the piece just ever so slightly. However, I mean it as very high praise when I say that the natural approach, the refusal to exaggerate, makes us respond to Cian and Grace in very much the same way that we were made to react to the two travellers who meet by chance in Richard Linklater’s wonderful trilogy that started with Before Sunrise in 1995. At the very least, Lakelands is a most encouraging introduction to two filmmakers and to two players only now known to me.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Éanna Hardwicke, Danielle Galligan, Lorcan Cranitch, Gary Lydon, Dafhyd Flynn, Dara Devaney, Lesley Conroy, Oisin Robbins, Naoise Dunbar, Seamus O’Rourke, Felix Brown, James Doherty O’Brien.
Dir Robert Higgins and Patrick McGivney, Pro Robert Higgins and Patrick McGivney, Screenplay Robert Higgins and Patrick McGivney, Ph Simon Crowe, Pro Des Chris Higgins, Ed Allyn Quigley, Music Daithí.
Harp Media/Screen Ireland-Wildbunch Distribution.
100 mins. Ireland. 2022. UK Rel: 5 May 2023. Cert. 15.
