Breakfast On Pluto

Cillian Murphy plays day-dreaming transvestite Patrick 'Kitten' Braden in Breakfast on Pluto.

Herald rating: * * * *

Irish director Neil Jordan made his name with a film about a cross-dressing character - Dil, in The Crying Game - but her sexual identity functioned both as moral shock and vicious plot twist.

From the moment he flounces on screen in this exuberant, funny, sometimes shocking and always utterly beguiling film, young Patrick Braden (Murphy) leaves us in no doubt about his sexual proclivities.

Patrick, who goes by the name Kitten, is a young, hopelessly romantic transvestite growing up in Ireland in the 1970s.

In such a context, his behaviour is unlikely to endear him to parents and schoolteachers but from the first scene he holds us in the palm of his hand.

The film, based on a novel by Pat McCabe, whose The Butcher Boy Jordan adapted 10 years ago, is about a young man coming to terms with who he is, but also with his past.

We soon realise that the local priest (Neeson) is more than a spiritual father to Patrick and that his mother is a cleaning woman who left her baby on the church steps and left town with her shame. For the length of the fast-moving film, Kitten embarks on a journey of self-discovery which, in a roundabout way, aims at finding his mother.

En route, he encounters a procession of oddballs almost as outlandish as he is: the mohawk-topped lead singer in a band who turns out to have a very dangerous sideline, a nightclub magician (Rea), and a cop (Ian Hart) who morphs from his homophobic tormentor into a gruff protector.

Jordan has likened Kitten to Voltaire's Candide, the template of the innocent abroad in a dangerous world. But that writer satirised the blind optimism of his character; Jordan's attitude is more affectionate.

Kitten's approach to life as a dizzy, chiffoned fantasia is the only way to deal with a hostile world in which the appearance of affection is almost certain to disguise cruel ulterior motive.

Yet significantly, Kitten does not become self-absorbed or selfish. Indeed the generosity of his spirit - obvious from the first scene, to which the rest of the film, a long flashback, works its way back - shines from every frame.

Jordan has extracted terrific performances from his ensemble, but Murphy is a revelation. The main character in Ken Loach's upcoming The Wind That Shakes The Barley, he is here a character of texture and depth who makes most screen cross-dressers look like vamping queens and it takes a hard heart indeed not to fall completely in love with him.

With a soundtrack bursting with hits from Handel through Cole Porter to T Rex, many of which act as a sly commentary on the action, this film gives a new twist to the meaning of the term "picaresque" and is unhesitatingly recommended.

Cast: Cillian Murphy, Liam Neeson, Stephen Rea, Brendan Gleeson, Bryan Ferry
Director: Neil Jordan
Running time: 124 mins
Rating: R13, sexual references, offensive language and violence. Screening: Rialto