Posted: 04/11/2004

Intermission

(2004)

by Coco Delgado

Irish humour, and Irish romantic comedies, are rather different than British humour and British romantic comedies. Thus, Intermission, which does, vaguely, resemble Love, Actually (related characters’ lives intertwining and love and romance happening), includes a bus accident, vomiting, gunshots, a bank heist, fist fights, a dead sheep and not one but two high-speed car chases.

And a few couples falling into and out of love.

It’s gritty and sappy, all at once. The cast is excellent…including Shirley Henderson, again, as anorak-wearing Sally (a sort of Irish Allison-from-The Breakfast Club) and Colm Meany as a rather mean detective who likes Celtic music. There’s a lot to this film, and it’s funny. The dialog (if you can follow an Irish accent, which I can) is quite witty in between all the swearing. There’s a running joke about Chef Brown Sauce that, unlike most running jokes, just keeps getting funnier as it continues. However, it’s also a bit violent and disgusting at times; most, but not all of the unpleasantness is off-camera with sound effects, though, which is nice.

It’s a movie about love…and how it’s not always easy, or pretty, or nice. Sometimes, it’s just plain uncooperative. But it beats the alternative. As Sally says, “what else is there?”

Coco Delgado is a writer currently enjoying life in Boston. You may worship her here.

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