Life's A Breeze (12A)

A simple Irish tale set in the very modern age, is not what you would imagine Pat Short appearing in. However it is a good comedy, with laughs intentional and unintentional in almost every scene.

Pat plays Colm, a fortysomething lad, with no job, living with his mother in a big Dublin townhouse.  The mother, played by the brilliant Fionnula Flanagan has the house like a timecapsule from around two decades ago.  Colm and his three siblings get the mother, with the help of his niece, Emma, out of the house for the day, while they clean up the place as a surprise to her.  Emma is played by a remarkable teenage newcomer, Kelly Thornton.

However the well-meaning siblings throw out the mother’s mattress, which is supposedly full of around €1 million cash. 

A search begins by Colm and company for the mattress in a sometimes hilarious journey.  Poignancy comes into the story many times, and the sadness of Colm’s and the mother’s situation come to the fore a couple of times.

Pat Short is quite a good actor, and showed expressions of frustration quite well, and definitely showed another facet to his comic being.  Eva Birthistle who starred around two decades ago in tv’s ‘Glenroe’, was the straight-woman comic to her mother and brother. 

Fionnula Flanagan is always a joy to watch whether it be on tv’s ‘Lost’ or on Irish movies like 2004’s ‘Man About Dog’.   Here she plays the mother, who may or may not be senile.  She is a treasure of an actress, and plays the elderly woman to a tee.  She even has a hip problem when she walks, that is so genuine, it can only be done by a method actress.

Kelly Thornton is the granddaughter, and through whose eyes the story unfolds.  You get the feeling there is more going on in this young girl’s mind, than is shown.  However Kelly does an amazing job, with a limited script.  While the script is great at displaying what is going on over the mattress, and the reactions of the mother and Colm, it should have done more than merely hint what was going on in the young girl’s life and mind.

The movie makes great use of the Irish media, with RTE, TV3 and some daily newspapers used to great effect, showing the authenticity of the story, and for that, you would feel as if you were watching a reality programme, albeit one with substance.