Aubrey Malone
Sing Street (PG)
The Christian Brothers come in for the inevitable bashing in this coming-of-age tale. There seem to be only two of them running Synge Street School in the film. (Its title is a pun on this.) The first (Des Keogh) is a caricature, the second (Don Wycherley) rules with an iron fist.
Many of the other characters are equally half-baked. Take Raphina (Lucy Boynton), for instance. Quiet-spoken adolescent Conor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) becomes infatuated with her after his father, the cash-strapped Brendan (Aidan Gillen), takes him out of a Jesuit College. (He puts him into the “Synger” instead.)
Has she had a troubled past? This is only vaguely alluded to after she becomes a “rock chick” in Conor’s burgeoning band. We needed to know more.
And what about Conor’s troubled older brother, Brendan (Jack Reynor)? Aside from one powerful speech, his backstory as a college drop-out is woefully underdeveloped. As for his younger sister Ann (Kelly Thornton) she appears so seldom she might as well not be there at all.
Neither do we learn why Brendan’s wife Penny (Maria Doyle Kennedy) becomes unfaithful to him, causing their marriage to crumble. All the plotlines in the film are thrown together, like Conor’s eclectic band, with total haphazardness.
There are times when it all seems to work. It successfully captures the era of the 1980s, when it’s set. At times it has so much energy it seems like 2016’s answer to The Commitments. There were even times when Conor reminded me of J.D. Salinger’s Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye, or Stephen Daedalus from Joyce’s Portrait.
But such moments are few and far between. More often the film contents itself with being one of those rebellious fairy tales Ireland has been so fond of churning out lately. Sacred cows are blithely demolished as a “youthquake” mind-set removes any awkward obstacles – like the ravages of the Irish Sea to our latter-day Romeo & Juliet as they depart the island of saints and scholars for a new life across the pond without two ha’pennies to rub together. (If only life were so simple.)
Barry (Ian Kenny), our resident school bully, is even co-opted into the band as a “roadie”. In the real world he’d probably be up in the Juvenile Court for assaulting “pretty boy” Conor with his effete ways and genteel clothing.
It’s escapism writ large but if you accept such cotton candy premises you’ll probably go into the kind of ecstacy about it they did at the Sundance Film Festival recently. (Or was that just because it contains a brilliant dream sequence featuring an American prom concert?)
Its main weakness is the fact that Boynton is English. Her accent is so obviously that of a British person trying to sound like posh Dublin that it rankles. So does the sameness of her high-pitched delivery throughout.
The film’s forte is its incredible music – as it should be; it’s written, produced and directed by John Carney.
Good ***