Studio Brown Sauce Film Productions, Buena Vista International, Company of Wolves, Film Council, IFC Films, Invicta Capital, Irish Film Board, Parallel Films
The rough-edged vitality of contemporary Irish filmmaking is readily apparent in Intermission, a deliriously ambitious black comedy in which 54 characters and 11 plotlines compete for consistently impressive screen-time. In a dazzling display of audacity, screenwriter Mark O'Rowe and first-time director John Crowley jump from one plot to another, tangling their characters in an infectious series of intersecting events, shifting from scenes of brutal violence, poignant compassion, and richly dark humor, and somehow managing to make it all fit together in a miraculously coherent tapestry of romance, crime, and authentic Dublin atmosphere. Colin Farrell and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine alumnus Colm Meaney are the familiar stars here, and they're in peak form on native soil, but the entire cast shines in equal measure, all of them playing malcontents striving for something better in a world that's simultaneously harsh and hilarious. From start to finish, Intermission is so full of surprises that you'll want to see it twice, just to marvel at the way its puzzle fits together. --Jeff Shannon
2.
In this dramedy starring Cillian Murphy (28 DAYS LATER) and Colin Farrell (PHONE BOOTH) a series of coincidences and haphazard relationships unite a small group of people living in Dublin. The result is an alternately depressing and humorous sideways glance at the way that people make their life decisions, seen through a group of duplicitous characters each of whom has a stubborn, selfish side and a soft, vulnerable side. With plenty of off-kilter jokes running the gamut from impotence and adultery to pissing and puking, INTERMISSION delivers its crowing potshot to female moustaches--quaintly nicknamed "tash" here. Sally (Shirley Henderson) is the downtrodden young woman with the "tash," and is also the sister of Deirdre (Kelly Macdonald) who is on the rebound after a hard breakup. Her ex-boyfriend John (Murphy) works as a clerk at a department store. His coworker Oscar (David Wilmot) is an impotent shy guy who finally finds a solution with Noeleen (Deirdre O'Kane), an older woman whose husband has just left her for the much-younger Deirdre. Meanwhile the overzealous cop Jerry (Colm Meany) is busy chasing after harmless criminal Lehiff (Colin Farrell). When a shocking bus accident occurs, the characters are brought together and forced to face the reality of their tangled lives.
3.
Intermission is a raucous story of the interweaving lives and loves of small-town delinquents, shady cops, pretty good girls and very (very) bad boys. With Irish guts and grit, lives collide, preconceptions shatter and romance is tested to the extreme.
An ill-timed and poorly executed break-up sets off a chain of events affecting everyone in town. There's the hapless romantic and his sex-starved best friend, the hotshot detective and the crook he's after, a young girl on the rebound with an older married man (not to mention his deserted wife), an ambitious TV producer, abandoned fiancée, preteen trouble-maker -- all unaware of how their choices are profoundly intertwined.
Fifty-four characters and eleven storylines intersect with "dazzling" (San Francisco Chronicle) results in this "fast-paced, hilarious" (BBCi) dark comedy starring Colin Farrell, Shirley Henderson, Kelly Macdonald, Colm Meaney, and Cillian Murphy.
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