Siddity In The City: Breakfast on Pluto. Again.

Sunday, October 02, 2005

Breakfast on Pluto. Again.

I kept my ticket and saw the movie. As if there was any doubt. Oh God, I loved it. It was so worth $30. And I will be going back to see it in general release next month. Cillian Murphy was outstanding: truly spooky-beautiful as Kitten, but played with a sort of clean, innocent goodness in his crazy baby blues the whole time. I doubt he'll make a habit of roles like this, but it is almost as though he is the Side of Light (TM)'s answer to spooky-lovely, but definitely Side of Darkness (TM), Dorian Gray-sinister Jonathan Rhys Myers. Ruth Negga was fantastic. And gorgeous. I just loved to look at her, and listen to her, and watch her onscreen, being absolutely present in their friendship at all times. And, godblessher, she grew up as a black woman in Ireland with the last name Negga. She must have balls of steel at this point. Gavin Friday! Gavin Friday! I now luh' me some Gavin Friday! The entire cast was quite good. I feel like each of Murphy's eyes should get an Oscar, one for best supporting actor, one for best supporting actress, because he can work those bitches. Neil Jordan, who turned up and was kind enough to do a Q&A after the film, is wunnerful. I loved his not-terribly-technical-nor-mindnumbingly-esoteric answers to the audience questions. He certainly didn't seem like he had an overlarge ego. But I think what I loved most about the film was the story itself. Kitten was so relentlessy optimistic, in her way, and always honest with those around her, again, in her way. Yes, she was a he in drag, but even in her gender performance, she never sought to deceive. And everything she ever did, she did out of bloodyminded goodness, from tossing IRA guns stashed in her house into the nearest body of water after a friend was blown up in the conflict (foolishly risking her life and that of boyfriend Billy, played by Gavin Friday), to going so far as to contrive to meet her long-lost mother, the woman who was practically her alter-ego's raison d'etre, but never uttering a word of their kinship once she saw the settled life her mother had built, a loyalty not every abandoned child would be big enough to display. God, and it was so funny. And sad. And I so often just wanted to cry a little for the misfits in the world. I mean, I'm one of them, clearly, but this movie was just so spot on in showing the beauty as well as the tragedy of cultural liminality. Sigh. Too much. Okay, I'm done. But y'all better see this goddamned movie when it comes out.