DOES LOVE CONQUER ALL ? "BREAKFAST ON PLUTO"

You have, undoubtedly, heard of Neil Jordan, director of such classics as “The Crying Game” and “The End Of The Affair”. Breakfast on Pluto was another one of his major classics. Was nominated for a Golden Globes and everything. Cillian Murphy was absolutely stellar as the leading actor. And the film is, I have to admit, pretty darn awesome on a lot of counts. I have a bit of a bad taste at the back of my mouth, in that I sense a goodly dollop of unused potential going on here, but we’ll get to that in a second. Let’s get on with the story first.
Patrick “Kitten” Brady was born and grew up in a small Irish town in the ‘70s. He does not fit in to his rather traditional surroundings on a number of counts, not less because, in the words of Ed Wood, “he likes wearing women’s clothes”. Unlike Ed Wood however, he is transsexual – as opposed to just a cross-dresser - and this is rarely well accepted in small villages as you have probably worked out for yourselves. To add to his already considerable troubles, Patrick is an orphan. His mother left for London a long while ago and never came back, “swallowed up by the town”. And one day, Patrick gets sick of the continual hurdles his life has thrown at him and decides to go London – the big city – find his mother and start again from scratch. And of course, like a lot of people who travel to London to make their fortunes, things do NOT go according to plan. Love, adventures and some danger all combine and invite us all on a surreal and heart-warming adventure.
I loved this movie. But the thing is, I have both good and bad things to say about it. My main problem with it is this : There are a lot of films, in fact I am pretty sure film theory will have called them a “genre” and given them a name by now, that portray original, misunderstood, sassy characters overcoming difficulties and dealing with small-mindedness with the flick of a wrist (basically). While this can be a realistic portrayal, I have found in time that dealing with small-mindedness is a bit tougher than that. At the very least it takes one heck of a lot out of you. So if not really well done – and if they show no weakness at all – characters like Patrick (or Kitten as he prefers to be called in the film) end up looking a tad unrealistic. That is sort of – sort of mind you – the feeling I got with this film. I mean yes, Kitten suffers, bad things happen and he doesn’t make all the right decisions and doesn’t cope with the whole thing ideally all the time, and yet… Yet it’s a little, just a little too bouncy. A lot of people in that kind of situation get good at hiding their emotions, and maybe director Neil Jordan was playing on that. And it has to be admitted the performance of Cillian Murphy as Kitten is nothing short of outstanding so maybe that was what it was but… I mean I don’t know. A bit too subtle. A tad unrealistic. But good fun. I mean, I preferred the Crying Game myself, but this is a nice, fun movie that will give you a good couple of giggles of an evening. And possibly make you think a bit too. I mean, I feel the need to add, this film tends to aim to amuse rather than to make you think or feel anything of any great depth, but naturally, if you know where to look, you shall find as well…