Arts: The debut feature by Cork director Margaret Corkery, with its elements of the Oedipus complex, borrows from Europe's master directors but also nods towards Carry On films
ART COMES from the oddest places. Glancing at Eamon, the debut feature by Margaret Corkery, a young Cork-born director, you appear to see nods towards a number of European masters. Following a ghastly holiday at a windswept Irish resort, this fine picture seems to acknowledge the nuttiness of Jacques Tati, the earthiness of Ken Loach and the unsettling absurdity of Emir Kusturica. So which respected master did she have in mind?
"I had in my head the notion of a Carry Onfilm," she says. "I wanted something in that genre where there are lots of mishaps, where the story goes back and forth."
Made under the Irish Film Board's low-budget Catalyst scheme, which also financed Conor Horgan's excellent One Hundred Mornings, Eamon finds the titular youngster causing trouble for his unfocused mother and her sexually frustrated partner while staying in a cabin on the Wicklow coast. With a budget of just €275,000, Margaret was forced to keep dialogue to a minimum and limit the number of characters.
“That does make you more creative in a way,” she says. “Working with a child actor, we had to have as little dialogue as possible, so there would be fewer retakes.
“But I wouldn’t change a thing. Every time you have an idea, you have to work out how this can be achieved on the budget and that makes you think hard.”
Raised in Cork, the daughter of a teacher and a housewife, Margaret studied at Edinburgh's Napier University and at the University of Westminster. Before making Eamon, she had already achieved a degree of acknowledgment for such impressively unusual shorts as Joyrideand Killing the Afternoon.
It is a tribute to the feature that, after a first viewing, you find yourself frantically pondering its meaning. Eamon, played impressively by young Robert Donnelly, becomes part of a nauseatingly positive youth group. He scowls outside the pub while his mother and her furrowed boyfriend knock back the booze. Then the film ends with a genuinely surprising conflagration.
There’s something here about the way children can destabilise a relationship. Isn’t there? “You know it was written too quickly to make any points about anything,” she says. “It couldn’t be making any specific points. I was interested in the way a child like Eamon manages to bring everyone down to his level. There are plenty of conflicting points made. But it was written so rapidly that I allowed the characters to dictate the story.”
The film has already played successfully at the Toronto Film Festival. Premiered alongside a raft of new Irish releases, Margaret's film managed to pick up the best reviews of the bunch. Despite having to do with a particular class of Irishness – miserable pre-boom holidays, in particular – the picture won over Varietymagazine, the industry bible.
“An entertainingly horrific vision of the Oedipus complex in action,” Alissa Simon wrote. “This confidently stylised debut feature from writer-helmer Margaret Corkery plays like the offspring of Aki Kaurismäki and Todd Solondz.”
Margaret must have been delighted that the film worked overseas. “It gets such different reactions in different countries,” she says. “The best reaction we got was in the United States, which surprised me. I thought it was such a European film. To be honest, I always thought it would have a better reception outside Ireland than here.”
Still, I guess the most worrying critique must have been that from her nearest and dearest. Margaret admits that she was particularly nervous about showing it to her parents. "I was a bit worried because of the sexual content of the film," she says. "But they were very supportive and it turned out they were more open minded than I might have imagined. My dad is quite religious, but he was fine with it." Just as well it didn't turn out to be a Carry Onfilm. That might have really have strained his tolerance.
Eamon opens at the IFI on Feb 5 and is on limited release from Feb 12
