Milo

Directed by Berend and Roel Boorsma. Starring Stuart Graham, Lorcan Bonner, Charlotte Bradley, Jer O’Leary, Laura Vasiliu

Directed by Berend and Roel Boorsma. Starring Stuart Graham, Lorcan Bonner, Charlotte Bradley, Jer O’Leary, Laura Vasiliu. Cineworld, 3.45pm ***

Whatever else you might say about this Irish-Dutch co-production, you couldn’t argue that you’ve seen many films like it. Featuring a discordantly multinational cast, set in a slightly displaced version of Ireland, the picture starts out as a study of a dysfunctional family, turns into a kind of road movie and ends in the land beyond sui generis. The reliably brittle Stuart Graham plays the overprotective father of a young boy named Milo (talented Lorcan Bonner).

We gather he has a skin complaint, but the extent and nature of the condition is concealed until late in the picture. After an argument about a school camping trip, Milo lights out for the country and ends up sheltering with a pair of (yes, I’m afraid so) loveably dissolute criminals. Despite the presence of Graham and – as the layabouts – the game Charlotte Bradley and the weather-beaten Jer O’Leary, Berend and Roel Boorsma’s film feels awfully European throughout. (Perhaps it will seem unmistakably Irish to the Dutch.) But that quirky, disorienting mix suits a picture that moves through such defiantly odd narrative territory. Worth absorbing.

Donald Clarke

Donald Clarke

Donald Clarke, a contributor to The Irish Times, is Chief Film Correspondent and a regular columnist