I can’t tell you the number of people I know with junkie-scumbag screenplays/radio plays/novellas in their back pocket. It’s practically a Dublin rite-of-passage to bang one out. Of course, the reason I’m guessing most of these meisterworks have never made it to a cinema near you, is that they never quite ring true. Either they milk the subject for farce, a la Spin The Bottle, or they bear pot-pourri traces of the lofty suburban heights from whence their authors came. Well, that’s only to be expected – most of the individuals in question were at Pony Club with me.
And that’s why Adam And Paul is such an unmitigated pleasure. Ostensibly a day in the life of two losers, Lenny Abrahamson’s film follows the eponymous junkies on a mission to score. With no money and nowhere to go, they’re thwarted at every turn. Even scrounging and stealing seem well beyond their smack-impaired capacities, as Paul’s (Murphy) disastrous attempts to rob a cramp-friendly milkshake from a supermarket illustrates rather well.
But what really makes Adam and Paul one of the best Irish movies you’re likely to have ever seen (I know that may not sound like much, but trust me, it’s brilliant) is the deft sensitivity with which the material is handled. Even at their most despicable – stealing from their former girlfriend, mugging a Downs’ syndrome kid in a laneway – the central characters are remarkably sympathetic, more sinned against than sinning. Their misadventures marry social realism and vaudevillian comedy, heartbreaking circumstance and hilarity to incredible effect, and the performances by Murphy and screenwriter O’Halloran are beautifully judged – simultaneously clownish, poignant and addled.
A genuinely essential tragi-comedy. Get your sweet behinds to the cinema now. Schnell…