ChikPapa Very disappointed :(

Supelice Dreadfully Boring

SanEat A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

davelynch16 May contain minor spoilers.Rarely have i been so captivated by an acting performance. Something can be said for the fact that not a lot happens in the first 35 minutes or so yet I was intrigued as to where this was going. Pat shortt is nothing short of unbelievable (if the Irish readers will pardon the pun). Shortt plays Josie, a quiet, lonely man with no relatives living locally and no friends to speak of. Everyone either bullies him or treats him like the village idiot, someone you never give a second thought to. He has never traveled far form the village he was born in. Any attempts he makes or has made to become intimate fail.The only thing in his life is his Job (At a local garage/shop) and his only pastimes are drinking at the local bar, and walking alone in the countryside.A chance of friendship comes from a 15 year old boy who is hired to help at the garage at weekends. Will this young kid treat him like everyone else or could this be a genuine friendship or possibly be misunderstood as something darker. It certainly a bleak movie but very well filmed on what was surely a very small budget. The Irish landscape almost feels as bleak as the movie but that only adds to story.Being from Ireland, I can say that there is at least one Josie in every town. Where you can sometimes be surrounded by people and be lonely. and in rural Ireland where there are less people about the loneliness could be unbearable. In fact the world is full of Jessies that we don't pass a second thought to.Unless you are from Ireland you may need subtitles for this movie. It's normal speaking and slang and an Irish native will have no problem understanding the phrases. This was a bold move by the makers, It's an Irish movie but the theme is universal "Loneliness" they have made no attempt to Americanize the movie by toning down the language and accents. So many "Orish" movies are ruined by an American cousin or foreign visitor come by just to appeal to an international audience. The people in this movie are Irish, and that's how we talk. Do yourself a favor and watch this movie yes it's emotional, but brilliant.

Fatboydim I had heard so many good things about this film. Poignant, sad, funny, gentle etc etc. However it's a missed opportunity. Pat Shortt portrays a man who is "Childlike". Whether he has some form of autism or not is not made clear, because it's a vague portrayal. Essentially the character never gets angry, rarely shows much emotion other than a general soft confusion. Smiles inanely a lot of the time. Does pointless jobs. As a portrayal of someone with Learning Difficulties it's lacking. People with LD, whether it's through severe epilepsy,Autism or Downs... have a range of emotions. In particular anger, frustration and a pent up sexual frustration. They get lonely, sad and also laugh and cry. Josie just grins. There was a real opportunity with this film to explore some of the issues people with LD face... Instead we got cardboard cut outs. All the characters may as well have worn t-shirts with, sad, sad and lonely, sad and lonely and drunk, sad and lonely and bully, sad and lonely and misunderstood. Every single character in the film was depressed, and had the same general malaise about them. The film has been praised for it's realism, I live in a small Irish town... during one of the most economically depressed times... and mostly people cover up their sadness... we'll all have a good moan and bitch, but the banter and humor is always there. None of the characters gradually revealed their inner thoughts or emotions... they were on display all the time. The only exception to this - everyone is miserable and showing it rule - was a cameo from the always reliable, George Costigan. It's certainly not a tragicomedy. I laughed only once - Josie's attempts to clear up after teenagers. As a drama it also lacks variation, because little happens and the incident that leads us to the film's inevitable conclusion is so slight that a viewer is bound to ask... Why now? After all Josie doesn't change at any point in the film. When he dances with a girl... it doesn't go far enough... When he watches the film with the teenage boy ... it doesn't go far enough... Both presented opportunities for the dramatist that he failed to follow through on.Yet it is enough for Josie to share the same fate as the puppies... And because the puppies are included we know that's the way Josie will choose to resolve his issues. I'm trying to be subtle in this review... but why bother? The film isn't... even the last frames of the film are hokey... a Horse that has been tethered in a field is now loose and free. Good grief!I have also heard good things about Mark O'Haloran's Adam and Paul - Again directed by Lenny Abrahamson - I'll give it a go at some point... but I don't hold out much hope. At the end of the film I just felt bored and disappointed.

Irishfilmfanatic From the team that brought us the wonderful "Adam and Paul" comes the slower and less comedic story of Josey, (Pat Shortt) a simple minded Garage worker in a changing rural town. The plot is not a 'high concept' one, and unfolds slowly with lot's of attention to character. However, it is never boring and has such a spellbinding atmosphere that one feels in the hand's of artists. The script is a sparse and economic masterclass in storytelling and the direction is of unforced confidence. The acting is flawless and the visuals again unfussy but beautiful. This all ties up to a very interesting end which will have you thinking for a long time to come.

Darío Metola Rodríguez Melancholy.In the film Garage, directed by Leonard Abrahamson, we see a good example of the melancholy of a man who is alone, appreciated by many people, but this people do not go a step further in their relationship with him.We can see in Josie's life (Pat Shortt) the happiness of the person that is not literate and does not know anything about real life, and thinks that everything is OK and that everybody takes care of him, as a childish thought about the society, but some events are going to change his mind.This sense of melancholy is given also, apart from the performance of Shortt, by the type of shots appearing in the film, mainly by extremely long shots, covering as much images as possible, even if there are people inside the frame. This type of shots give us the feeling of loneliness that Josie feels, although he does not realize of it, and transfer us the loneliness of the Irish countryside, sad, rainy and plain. We can see that the camera is just a witness of what is happening, it is not a watcher of the action, as an example there are not counter shots or over-the-shoulder shots, everything is just like a photography, where the director wants to have as much visual information as possible. The lack of conversation is solved by this use of the camera, and the absence of a real action is not the important characteristic of this film, but something that aims us to think about the film, not just to see it.Darío Metola Rodríguez.