The Closer You Get

There is a funny idea sneaking around at the back of this movie. A bunch of useless blokes in a Donegal village are fed up with the lack of local talent and so put an ad in a Miami newspaper for girls to come over for the summer dance.

Instead of having fun with this, writer William Ivory decides to stick a moral message onto the thing. It may look greener in the next field, boyos, but what you've got right beside you is just as fine.

Profound stuff, indeed. The men in the village are either so shy they can't talk to girls, or too stupid to realise what eejits they look. The girls are bright as buttons, although the best one has a lapse and falls for the biggest eejit of the lot, Kieran the butcher (Ian Hart), who spends half the day adjusting his crotch.

William Trevor writes wonderful stories about the loneliness of country life in Ireland. The Closer You Get could never be one of his. It's not true to itself and seems full of actors who behave like actors in a place that doesn't feel part of them. The same old Oirish jokes are hauled out in the same old pub with familiar pints of black stout on the table and a priest somewhere, wringing his hands, and the sun going down across the bay over the islands and the older women watching from behind curtains. If it's not about sex and fishing, it's about love and sheep. This one beats them all. It's about not having sex and shouting when drunk.