The rain which poured down on Cork throughout last Sunday could not dampen the enthusiasm of the audiences nor the organisers of the 45th Murphy's Cork Film Festival as the event entered its final day. Its general manager, Rory Concannon, was in the happy position of being able to announce that ticket sales were up by 15 per cent on last year's tally, which, in turn, had represented an increase of 25 per cent on the 1998 figure.
The key to the continuing success of Cork - one of the longest-running film festivals in the world as well as one of the friendliest - is the admirably diverse programme of international features, shorts and documentaries selected by its director, Mick Hannigan.
Of the new international features shown over the closing weekend, Suzhou River, which took top prize at the Rotterdam Festival this year, was one of the most impressive. Following no predictable course and clearly influenced by Hitchcock (specifically Rear Window and Vertigo), Lou Ye's picture of obsession and loss is set in present-day Shanghai.
In two parallel stories, a freelance videographer falls in love with a young woman who performs as a mermaid in a city bar, while a motorcycle courier is drawn to a young woman he is assigned to transport - and who bears a remarkable resemblance to the mermaid performer from the other story. This is serene, involving, imaginative cinema.
Whereas the two male protagonists of Suzhou River are longing for commitment, the young men at the centre of writer/director Nick Grosso's Peaches are still running scared of responsibility and commitment as they near the end of their 20s. Adapted by Grosso from his own successful stage play, Peaches, which had its world premiere at Cork on Saturday night, is set entirely in London but was filmed mostly in Dublin on the initiative of its Irish producer, Ronan Glennane.
Its principal character, Frank, engagingly played by Welsh actor Matthew Rhys, is unperturbed by failing his final year exams and looks forward to an indolent summer of pleasure in London, where his media business friend, Pete (Matthew Dunster) offers him free accommodation. Pete devises a board game using toy cars to mark their sexual progress over the summer.
In this wry view of lad culture, we observe the attempted seduction of Frank by a college friend (Kelly Reilly), both as it actually happens and as Frank embroiders it for his mates. These are young men who happily spend far more time talking among themselves about relationships, past and potential, than doing much about them. Grosso's perceptive screenplay displays a keen ear for apt dialogue, and is acted with conviction by a fresh young cast.
The young couple at the centre of John Forte's Mad About Mambo, a romantic comedy set in Forte's native Belfast, are from opposite sides of the tracks. Gabriel Byrne worked as executive producer on this movie, which features William Ash as Danny Mitchell, a west Belfast schoolboy who dreams of someday joining the successful football club, Belfast United - an ironic name in that the club does not accept Catholics.
Danny's hopes are raised when the club makes its first Catholic signing, a Brazilian striker, whose graceful footwork inspires Danny to improve his game by taking samba lessons. He is attracted to the star pupil, the aloof Lucy (Keri Russell), and when he accidentally injures her snooty boyfriend in a soccer game, Lucy reluctantly teams up with Danny for the imminent ballroom dancing championship.
Political and religious differences are treated with breezy, throwaway humour in Forte's fairytale film, which inevitably invokes comparisons with Strictly Ballroom and Billy Elliot, both of which enlivened their formulaic outlines with much sharper visual and narrative ideas.
Lightweight and slender though it is, Mad About Mambo is difficult to dislike, and the two young leads are backed up by such experienced actors as Rosaleen Linehan as the spirited dancing teacher, Jim Norton as the Christian Brother who regards soccer as "a British imperialist sport", and Brian Cox as a DIY chain supremo who says of fellow board members at Belfast United: "I'm their worst nightmare - a Catholic with cash."
Premiere 2000, the new crop of short films from Northern Ireland showcased at Cork, did not match the standard of previous years, relying too much on whimsical notions. The best and most ambitious of them was Bryan Drysdale's Deadlands, a taut and atmospheric picture of a UN soldier held captive in an unnamed European country.
The latest round of animated short films in Frameworks, the scheme funded by Bord Scannan na hEireann, RTE and the Arts Council, also fell short of past achievements. The most impressive work included Caroline Dunn's promising and original The Angelic Organ, screened as a work in progress; Edith Pieperhoff's Central American spin on the legend of creation in How It All Began; and Cashell Horgan's entertaining claymation film, Paddy, which poked well-judged fun at images of modern Ireland.
Several of the most interesting and accomplished new shorts showing at Cork were part of the latest Oscailt initiative funded by Bord Scannan and TG4. Jacqueline O'Neill's Inion an Fhiaclora (The Dentist's Daughter) is a quirky, surreal horror movie set in the village of Caislean Ui Chuinn, where the eponymous Quinn (played with relish by Micheal O'Suilleabhan) is a smarmy and sinister character who operates as the local TD, garda, dentist, supermarket owner - and murderer.
Robert Quinn's highly assured An Leabhar (The Book) opens in Paris - and in French - with a young Irish student (Colm O Maonlai) discovering a murdered couple in a hotel. On returning home, he finds himself drawn into a circle of professional assassins whose next target is the Papal Nuncio. Aptly enough, he first meets their mastermind in a bar named The Lee Harvey. Adroitly scripted by Darach O Scolai and elegantly shot by Ronan Fox, An Leabhar is stylish and intriguing cinema.
Playing cleverly with language and bilingualism, Frankie McCafferty's bright and witty Filleann an Feal (What Goes Around) follows two Dubliners on a quest for poteen in Connemara. The set-up is that they must appear fluent in Irish to do the deal with the distiller they are meeting. An amusingly deadpan Cillian Murphy plays the younger of the two men, whose limited Irish allows him to speak only in literal translations, to the irritation of his colleague, played by Don Wycherly, who also wrote the lively screenplay which delivers a sharp punchline.
