A NEW Irish comedy, Happy Ever Afters, is being pitched to potential buyers at the Festival de Cannes as "a manic mix of romance, deception, politics, sex and maybe, just maybe, love".
It will be shot in Bray, Co Wicklow, for five weeks from July 14th, the film's producer Lesley McKimm said in Cannes yesterday.
A deal has already been concluded for Sydney-based distribution company Hopscotch to acquire the Australian rights to the film. Trish Long, vice-president and general manager of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Ireland, has bought the Irish distribution rights.
The film is set over less than 24 hours in an Irish hotel where two wedding receptions coincide on the same day.
One is a marriage between a young Irish woman who is short of money and agrees to marry a Nigerian immigrant. The other is the re-marriage of an Irish couple who had divorced each other.
Tom Riley, the young English actor who featured in the UK comedy, I Want Candy, is cast as the re-marrying man.
Sally Hawkins, who won the best actress award for Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Luckyat this year's Berlin Film Festival, will play the bride in the arranged marriage.
In the autumn, she will play activist and former MP Bernadette Devlin in Aisling Walsh's film, The Roaring Girl.
McKimm describes Happy Ever Aftersas "a screwball comedy with a good dash of romance".
The film's Irish writer-director, Stephen Burke, won a slew of awards with his short films, After 68and 81, and he directed the TV dramas, No Tears, dealing with Irish women given the Anti-D blood product in the hepatitis C scandal, and Anner House, based on a Maeve Binchy short story.
The Camembert Quartet will play one of the wedding bands, and the producers are seeking an African band for the other wedding.
The low-budget comedy is planned for release in the spring of 2009.'
Meanwhile, filming got under way in Ireland yesterday on Cracks, a drama set at an English boarding school for girls in 1935. Described as "a compelling tale of innocence corrupted", it is the first film directed by Jordan Scott, whose father, Sir Ridley Scott, made such films as Gladiator, American Gangsterand Thelma & Louise. He and his director brother Tony Scott, who made True Romance, are executive producers on Cracksthrough their company, Scott Free.