[ FILM ]
GOD’S CREATURES
The bad son: Paul Mescal shines again as Brian.
★★★
OUT 31 MARCH / CERT TBC 94 MINS
DIRECTORS Saela Davis, Anna Rose Holmer
CAST Emily Watson, Paul Mescal, Aisling Franciosi, Declan Conlon, Toni O’Rourke, Marion O’Dwyer
PLOT In an Irish fishing village, Aileen (Watson) lives a quiet life that is shaken when her son Brian (Mescal) returns from a time in Australia. He wants to reestablish the family’s oyster farm, but his behaviour forces Aileen into one moral quandary after another.
THE RETURN OF a prodigal son is supposedly a time of thanksgiving and celebration — but sometimes it would be better if he stayed away. A dysfunctional mother-son relationship fuels this slow-burning drama from Anna Rose Holmer and Saela Davis, demanding considerable patience of the audience but repaying them with a building sense of tension. As a follow-up to Holmer’s 2015’s The Fits, about apparently psychosomatic episodes in an all-girls dance troupe, it could hardly be more different in time or place, but this chilly tale shares a preoccupation with the price and power of belonging.