Darragh Byrnes’ ‘Parked’ was showing in the Tricycle Cinema, Kilburn last night as part of the 2011 Irish Film Festival. It is a grim piece about Fred (Colm Meany), a returned emigrant from Britain who is forced to live in a car park looking out on Dublin Bay. It was shot over 21 days in the cold January of 2010. Fred strikes an unlikely but credible friendship with a doomed younger man, Cathal, (Colin Morgan) who lives in an even smaller car. He also meets an attractive Finnish widow, Juliana (Milka Ahlroth) in a sports centre. She is music teacher who lives in the contrasting luxury of a Georgian house on the south side. A mutual attraction is apparent but barely has time to develop. Meanwhile Cathal is getting serious heat from his dealer. In a sense, nothing much happens, or at least nothing that could not be predicted, yet it is the honesty of the film, the performances and the tightness of the script (by Ciaran Creagh) that shine through. This is life as is it lived. Yet such gritty themes are largely ignored by mainstream filmmakers. There are echoes here of the buddy relationship between Dustin Hoffman’s Ratso and John Voight’s Joe Buck in Schlesinger’s 1969 hit ‘Midnight Cowboy’. There is also the same sense of impending doom. In addition, there's a Beckettian influence in the squalor from which the protagonists seem to reveal much that is unsaid. The performances are exceptional from Meany, Morgan and Ahlroth.
Particularly affecting is a short scene near the end between Fred and Cathal’s father (Stuart Graham).
The movie well deserves the garlands showered on it at various European film festivals.
Interesting interview with Meany (despite the knuckle-headed digression from the male presenter about gaelic football.)
Interview with Colin Morgan about Parked and other work
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