‘The Sparrow’: Galway Review

Dir/scr: Michael Kinirons. Ireland. 2022. 88mins

Repressed emotions find a way to surface and hit home in The Sparrow, Michael Kinirons’ sensitively handled debut feature which focuses on a teenage boy caught in the crosshairs of loss, grief, guilt and toxic masculinity. Well cast and beautifully shot on atmospheric Irish locations, this small-scale, effective drama should secure further festival attention and some modest theatrical interest following a world premiere at Galway.

There are no surprise twists or overt melodrama, just a careful, steady playing out of the story

Writer/director Kinirons has made a number of shorts (Lowland Fell, I Can’t See You Anymore) and wrote the screenplay for the 2015 Nicole Kidman mystery Strangerland. His debut feature is set in West Cork, among lush green countryside and threatening coastal waters, where Kevin Coyne (played by compelling actor/musician Ollie West) is treated like a black sheep by his own family. His young sister Sally (Michelle Gleeson) has time for him but his father Larry (David O’Hara), a gruff army veteran, is as approachable as a wounded bear. His wife’s death in a car crash is something he deals with by never discussing it. In terms of expressing his feelings, a manly hug is as far as he is prepared to go.

Eldest son Robbie (Eanna Hardwicke) is set to follow in his father’s footsteps by joining the cadets and pursuing a career in the military. Kevin is the son who never meets his father’s expectations. Kinirons’ screenplay is good at defining a relationship marked by the disappointment and resentment of two men who cannot acknowledge their common suffering. Kevin picks over his mother’s possessions that are now stored away in the attic, wearing her jacket and trying on an old lipstick. Larry buries his grief in silence and alcohol. 

Mourning his mother, lonely Kevin rides around the small coastal town of Baltimore on his brother’s quad bike. He thinks he has found a kindred spirit in local girl Hanna (Isabelle Connolly) and something else to care about in a wounded sparrow he nurses back to health. A boating trip with his brother and the chain of lies and evasions that follows only deepens the existing divisions within the family.

The Sparrow sets out it wares in a conventional fashion as a sullen teenager finds himself at odds with his macho father and eclipsed by his older brother. When tragedy strikes, however, it becomes a more involving proposition. Kinirons is able to develop the characters, revealing each one as less clear cut and more troubled. Larry is not without feeling. The breezy, obedient Robbie isn’t quite as comfortable with his favourite son destiny as he appears. All the men are the victims of an inability to communicate.

The mystery elements of the plot serve a film where the focus remains on what the situation reveals about the family. There are no surprise twists or overt melodrama, just a careful, steady playing out of the story, the emotional consequences and the impact on the relationship between Kevin and his father.

Kinirons has a cracking cast at his disposal. Eanna Hardwicke makes Robbie a sympathetic, relatable figure, while Isabelle Connolly lends some shading to Hanna. David O’Hara, who also serves as the film’s executive producer, has one of his best roles in recent memory. His burly physicality and flinty manner make Larry a suitably threatening figure. The heartbreak he endures gives O’Hara a rare opportunity to show more of his emotional range.

As Kevin, Ollie West captures the gawky awkwardness of this bruised adolescent, the sense of always being on edge and waiting for the next blow to fall. The maturity of his moving performance signals the arrival of a very promising young screen actor.