Saw Breakfast on Pluto, a film about Kitty, a male-to-female transsexual, surviving the 60s and 70s in Ireland. The film has a very throw-back-ey feel, with a Oscar Wilde-ian heavy emphasis on flippancy and arch irreverence. The film earns this silliness however, making it less spectacular and funny but more grounded and real. Kitty is an intelligently empty-headed woman, choosing to retreat from harsh realities into a world of double entendres and love songs and the breathy patter of pillow-talk. She is committed to this lovey-dovey nonsense world, we discover, even in the face of death and imprisonment. It provides a defence and sometimes serves as a grotesque sort of weapon.
The film's plot follows Kitty as she searches for her mother (she is also an orphan, you see.) Her journey takes her tangentially into contact with the NRA but unfortunately any trenchant observations about The Troubles went right over my ignorant American head. For the uninformed, these scenes provide a contrapuntal, grim and terrifying reality which we do not believe is any better than Kitty's fantasy land. She is often told to be more serious but she just rolls her eyes and bats her lashes and why shouldn't she?
The film argues the appeal of Kitty's fantasies but this fevered embrace of flippancy really feels dated to me. Perhaps the film's merely mirroring the outlook of the central Kitty, but come on: let's be more serious, can't we?
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