Irish film maker Neil Jordan is probably best known for The Crying Game, Interview with the Vampire and the thriller Mona Lisa but he’s often made honourably unconventional choices, from the wistful dark fairy tale of The Company of Wolves to the raucous The Butcher Boy.
Like the latter, his 2005 drama Breakfast on Pluto (which premieres on Sky Movies HD on March 21) is based on a book by Patrick McCabe. It actually manages to take in both Butcher Boy-style exuberance (including first-person narration) and Crying Game-style cross dressing.
The film is dominated by an extraordinary performance from Cillian Murphy (28 Days Later, Batman Begins, Red Eye, Sunshine) as Patrick, who was abandoned as a baby in Ireland in the late 1950s.
As he grows up and looks into who his real parents were, Patrick takes to dressing as a woman and his alter ego, ‘Kitten’, is born. Kitten moves to a slightly more tolerant ’70s London, but being Irish at a time when the UK is suffering from IRA attacks does not make life easy.
The supporting cast includes Jordan stalwart Stephen Rea along with Liam Neeson (Michael Collins) and Brendan Gleeson. Despite its passing resemblance to The Crying Game, the daringly offbeat Breakfast on Pluto is in an entirely different kind of orbit.
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