The Closer You Get
USA/UK/Ireland 1999
Reviewed by Kevin Maher
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
A small village on the coast of Donegal, Ireland, the present. Local bachelors led by Kieran O'Donnagh, the village butcher, write a personal ad in the Miami Herald asking for available young American women to join them for the upcoming St Martin's Day celebrations. Mary the postmistress steams open the ad before sending it and tells the local women about the men's plan. At work, Kieran is excited, much to the annoyance of his doting assistant Siobhan. Kieran, his brother Ian, friends Ollie and Sean and bar owner Pat prepare for the St Martin's Day dance. Meanwhile, the womenfolk, led by Siobhan and Pat's unhappy wife Kate, invite a group of Spanish sailors to the dance.
The American girls fail to appear at the dance. Ian and Kate have an impromptu midnight stroll and Kieran fights one of the sailors over Siobhan. Furious with Kieran, Siobhan kisses the sailor. The next day Ian has a fight with Pat over Kate. Ollie, nervous about his sexual inexperience, purchases pornographic magazines from Amsterdam. Pat leaves Kate. Kate decides she must leave the village also, but Ian wins her back. Kieran asks Siobhan out on a date and she agrees. Mary, excited by Ollie's interest in pornography, has sex with him. Sean leaves town, just as the American girls arrive.
Review
Three years later and the aftershocks from The Full Monty's success story continue to reverberate. Following Saving Grace, House! and The Match, The Closer You Get is yet another innocuous provincial comedy radiating feel-good insincerity and cleanly packaged for an international audience. But here producer Uberto Pasolini (The Full Monty, Palookaville) and debut director Aileen Ritchie have gone one further, borrowing Monty's central premise - a group of marginalised male characters negotiate their collective crisis of masculinity by embarking on a harebrained scheme - and wrapping it up in a haze of Celtic whimsy.
Set in a rural idyll in the west of Ireland, The Closer You Get's compulsion to embrace tiresome national stereotypes overrides even the slightest interest in lived reality. Hence Kieran and his mob are perpetually surrounded by pints of Guinness; they actually say "sláinte" when they drink (a toast used only by visiting US tourists); and Ollie needs to write to Amsterdam to get access to pornography. The last detail is particularly telling: bypassing common sense - Ollie could just as easily have gone online to procure such material just as Kieran could have e-mailed the Miami Herald with his ad - William Ivory's script depends for important plot points on a vision of Ireland as backward. Even when it occasionally lurches beyond the familiar, the film tests the limits of credibility. The central location, a village in Donegal, is underpopulated yet manages to be fantastically affluent, supporting an independent butcher's, a post office, a barber's and a brothel. There's a similar lack of narrative cohesion to the script, which relies on a voiceover from a character who makes a few perfunctory appearances at the film's beginning and end, but is otherwise absent from the story.
Working from such frivolous material, it's an accomplishment that Ian Hart's energetic burlesque remains generally engaging. French director of photography Robert Alazraki (La Belle Verte, This Year's Love) shoots the village and its surrounding countryside proficiently, but the deadly familiar visual iconography of this quaint Irish town has a license of its own. Its verdant pastures, rocky coastlines and snugly nestled houses are gaudy signifiers of a jaded sensibility. And no amount of coldly calculated Full Monty feeling can change it.
Credits
- Director
- Aileen Ritchie
- Producer
- Uberto Pasolini
- Screenplay
- William Ivory
- Story
- Herbie Wave
- Director of Photography
- Robert Alazraki
- Editor
- Sue Wyatt
- Production Designer
- Tom McCullagh
- Music
- Rachel Portman
- ©Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
- Production Companies
- Fox Searchlight Pictures presents a Redwave production
- Produced with the support of investment incentives for the Irish Film Industry
- provided by the Government of Ireland
- Co-producers
- Polly Leys
- Mark Huffam
- Production Co-ordinator
- Lil Heyman
- Unit Manager
- Brian Cannon
- Location Manager
- Stephen Killen
- Assistant Directors
- Konrad Jay
- Karen Richards
- Dermot Whelan
- Script Supervisor
- Cathy Doubleday
- Casting Director
- Maureen Hughes
- Additional Photography
- Sean Corcoran
- Special Effects Supervisor
- Martin Neill
- Graphic Artist
- Lawrence O'Toole
- Art Directors
- Shane Bunting
- Jean Kerr
- Draughtsman
- Gary McGinty
- Costume Designer
- Kathy Strachan
- Costume Supervisor
- Colette Jackson
- Chief Make-up Artist
- Pamela Smyth
- Chief Hairdresser
- Jon Henry Gordon
- Titles/Opticals
- Capital FX (London)
- Spanish Guitar
- Tito Heredia
- Lead Guitar
- John Parricelli
- Music Conductor
- David Snell
- Recording Engineer
- Chris Dibble
- Auricle
- Chris '40' Cozens
- Music Adviser
- Liz Gallacher
- Soundtrack
- "Only One Girl" - The Saw Doctors; "A Girl Like You" - Edwyn Collins; "Would You..?" - Touch & Go; "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" - The Proclaimers; "Tell Laura I Love Her" - Ricky Valance; "Irish Reels" - Breandon O'Hare, Jason O'Rourke, Raymond Gallen, Alan McCartney, Tiarnan O Duinnchinn, Tito Heredia; "Black Is the Colour" - Mae McKenna, John Paricelli; "Horny" - Mousse T. Vs Hot'n'Juicy; "Can't Get By without You" - The Real Thing; "A Kiss to Build a Dream On" - Louis Armstrong; "I Get the Sweetest Feeling" - Jackie Wilson; "It's Easy to Say"; "Bolero"; "America"
- Choreography
- Sian Williams
- Sound Recordist
- Peter Lindsay
- Recording Engineer
- Steve Carr
- Re-recording
- Robert Farr
- Sound Editor
- Zane Hayward
- Dialogue Editor
- Stewart Henderson
- ADR
- Re-recording:
- Andy Thompson
- Editor:
- Stewart Henderson
- Foley Artists
- Jack Stew
- Felicity Cottrell
- Re-recording:
- Andy Thompson
- Marine Co-ordinator
- Patrick Kyles
- Stunt Co-ordinator
- Donal O'Farrell
- Film Extract
- 10 (1979)
- Cast
- Ian Hart
- Kieran O'Donnagh
- Sean McGinley
- Ian
- Niamh Cusack
- Kate
- Ruth McCabe
- Mary
- Ewan Stewart
- Pat
- Pat Shortt
- Ollie
- Cathleen Bradley
- Siobhan
- Sean McDonagh
- Sean
- Risteard Cooper
- Father Hubert Mallone
- Maureen O'Brien
- Dollie
- Pat Laffan
- Giovanni
- Joan Sheehy
- Joan
- Britta Smith
- Mrs Duncannon
- Dessie Gallagher
- Mickey
- Deborah Barnett
- Ella
- Patricia Martin
- Mrs Lock
- Frank Laverty
- Brian
- Doreen Keogh
- Mrs Giovanni
- Pauline Hutton
- Deirdra
- Nuala O'Neill
- Molly
- Michael McDougall
- Liam
- Nora Keneghan
- Mrs Campbell
- Antonio Sierra
- Massimo Marraccini
- Tito Heredia
- Thomas Timoney
- Philippe Buret
- Spanish sailors
- Brian Cannon
- bus driver
- Nikki Fox
- Karen Noble
- Regina Ford
- American girls
- Jackie Quinn
- Jackie Fitzpatrick
- Certificate
- 12
- Distributor
- 20th Century Fox (UK)
- 8,280 feet
- 92 minutes
- Dolby
- Colour by
- DeLuxe London