‘There was really only one dog for this role’

When the programme for this year’s Dublin International Film Festival arrived, I, among other people, was immediately bullish about one, as yet unseen, title. It was the publicity still (now the poster) that did it. Aw, look at the lady having dinner with her dog in Róise & Frank. If that isn’t great, I’ll give up cinema forever. Happily, Rachel Moriarty and Peter Murphy’s film did turn out to be a delight. Starring Bríd Ní Neachtain as a recently widowed woman who believes her husband’s soul has returned in the body of a stray dog, the film won a best ensemble prize at Dublin and went on to take the audience prize at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. The film is already a sensation. And it’s in Irish.

Now it goes before paying audiences in commercial cinemas.

“We’re really excited,” Moriarty says. “We got a great buzz out of audiences in the US. Dublin was a great reaction. I’m particularly excited about showing it to a very broad audience. I think it’s something that kids and families can go to. That’s something in the Irish language we haven’t had a lot of. So I am excited.”

Moriarty and Murphy have been working together for close to 30 years. Both graduates of Dublin City University, they developed a strong reputation for diverse work in short films and television before, in 2015, moving into features with Traders, an impressive, violent thriller starring Killian Scott, Barry Keoghan and the late Nika McGuigan. That urban scrabble does little to prepare you for the gentle pleasures of Róise & Frank. The new film, developed under the increasingly impressive Cine4 scheme, is shot in and around Irish-speaking areas of Waterford.

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We tried to come up with a story that would be very true to a place that genuinely had an Irish-speaking community

“The scheme was announced and it felt very exciting,” Moriarty says. “Because it looked in a different direction. It looked at subtitled films. So we sat down to write something specifically for that. And we tried to come up with a story that would be very true to a place that genuinely had an Irish-speaking community. So that was definitely a part of forming the story.”

“When someone asks, ‘Are you prepared to mull over this for three years?’ that is a key question,” Murphy adds. “You ask, ‘Will this be driving me mad in three years’ time?’ Ha, ha. We thought, yes, this would be a nice one to do.”

Let us get past the awful cliché as quickly as possible. Róise & Frank is packed with smashing actors. Bríd Ní Neachtain is enormously touching as an apparently sane woman who allows herself to believe the impossible (she’s a less miserable Nicole Kidman from Birth). The inimitable Lorcan Cranitch is in his element as a mean-spirited neighbour. But we all want to talk about the top-notch canine performance from Barley. I clear my throat. They say you should never work with children and anima…

“That hoary old cliché gets brought up every time, and every time we say we only ever work with children,” Murphy says.

“There was really only one dog for this role,” Moriarty says. “There was only one dog that would be able to do everything we wanted it to do. But we didn’t have a lot of experience in that area.”

Murphy has a terrible, terrible secret about Barley.

“We always get a bit of a gasp — particularly with American audiences — because it’s such an Irish film, when we reveal that we got the dog in England. Ha, ha. There were some really good people here, but they didn’t really have a dog to fit the bill. We contacted this company in the UK and she said, ‘I have only got one dog that could do this’.”

He goes on to explain that the trainers had an issue with the reference to a “sliotar”.

“One of their key questions was, ‘We don’t know what a sly-oh-tar is, but it sounds like it might be a ball. That might be tricky.’ Every time the sliotar appeared, Barley just got so excited. He was not on marks. That was time for play. That was challenging. But fun-challenging.”

Róise & Frank is, of course, part of a thrilling new wave in Irish-language filmmaking. Cúán Mac Conghail, the experienced producer of the film, was also behind the chilling historical drama Arracht from 2019. This year Colm Bairéad’s An Cailín Ciúin has broken records in cinemas and now looks like a plausible nominee for the best international feature Oscar. The continuing success suggests there really is an audience for cinema in the native language and that there are filmmakers willing to engage with the challenges.

Moriarty raises another point that I haven’t heard made yet.

“I think we definitely have audiences that are just more used to subtitles,” she says. “Now, you go on Netflix and you’re maybe going to watch the latest Belgian crime drama. You don’t say, ‘Oh my god, I have to read’. Somebody was saying to me the other day, ‘Do you remember when there was an Irish film and you’d think, oh god, I hope it’s good’. There was a weight on your shoulders. Maybe the fact that people are watching in subtitles changes that. You feel like you’re watching something removed from you.”

This is a strong argument. Over the past few years, younger viewers have taken to watching even English-language films with the subtitles on. A mode that was once forbidding is now mainstream. Those who do connect with Róise & Frank will encounter a film that sneaks thoughtful engagement into the cockle-warming comedy. The film is making a genuine attempt to consider the process of grieving. It has something to say about how even the most caring friends and family can get a little irritated with the bereaved.

“We thought a lot about that,” Moriarty says. “We thought how you are only allowed to grieve for a certain amount of time. Then there is a date in the calendar when people say, ‘You really should move on’. And we were thinking about that — how do you deal with that if you can’t do it in the allotted time. The other thing we wanted to get across is that people come back or find a connection when they’re ready to find a connection. And the connection may not be one you can force upon them.”

Not only are films in Irish being flogged successfully at home, but they are also connecting overseas. It was an achievement to get Róise & Frank into the Santa Barbara film festival. Its victory in the audience choice prize was more remarkable still. I wonder what the American audiences made of the picture. They must surely detect different beats and rhythms in the action. It may even feel somewhat exotic to them.

We wanted the locals to be part of it. And we wanted it to have the language of the place

“The response has been amazing,” Murphy says. “We had a friend in the audience who heard someone whisper, ‘I was in Ireland and I didn’t hear anyone speak Irish’. Ha, ha. I think they love the fact that we filmed it in an actual Gaeltacht region. Do the kids speak the language? Yes, most of the kids and — certainly Ruadhán [de Faoite], our main young actor — do. That’s Ruadhán’s native tongue. His family are native Irish speakers. Quite a few of those playing smaller parts would use it. There was an awareness that obviously it’s not our main language. But I think the audiences were surprised that it is a living language.”

Moriarty makes interesting comparison with a great British film of the 1940s.

“We did have that Whisky Galore! feeling. We wanted the locals to be part of it. And we wanted it to have the language of the place,” she says.

I’m interested how they feel the Irish film industry has changed since they started out at the end of the last century. Has it galloped along as far as the many celebratory features suggest?

“I think there’s no comparison to where it was,” Murphy says. “Not long after the time of My Left Foot there were all these strange solo projects by a handful of people. Whereas now, you really feel there’s a movement — not just the Irish-language thing, but lots of English-language films as well.”

Throughout the decades, the professional partnership between Murphy and Moriarty has survived. That’s an achievement in itself.

“We have never been successful enough to fall out,” Moriarty jokes.

This might do it?

“Yes, this might finally do it,” Murphy says with cackle.

Róise & Frank opens on September 16th