User Reviews

Neil Jordan's films are always a pleasure to watch. There are always surprises in the way he develops his movies, as he proves with "Breakfast on Pluto", which the director helped adapt for the screen with the author of the novel, Pat McCabe. Mr. Jordan achieves another triumph in his distinguished career with this new movie that has a genuine and gritty look thanks to the excellent cinematography by Declan Quinn.

When young Patrick is left at the step of the small town's church, Father Bernard doesn't seem too surprised to find the young infant at his door. He is instrumental in placing the young boy with one of the town's women who brings up Patrick until he is a teen ager. It becomes clear young Patrick is a little girl trapped in a boy's body. He begins calling himself Kitten. His love for the outrageous makes him dress in a manner that he sticks out from the crowd. As such, he attracts the eye of a singer of a band who falls for Kitten and takes her to live in a remote part of the country. Alas, the romance takes a tragic turn because of Billy's involvement with the IRA.

Kitten always wanted to find the "Phantom Lady", a nickname he gave to his natural mother, who moved to London after giving him up. As he arrives in the big city, Kitten discovers a world he never knew and in many ways, he thrives int the rich atmosphere of that swinging place at that time. The film is, in a way, a picaresque account of Kitten's road to maturity. His goal to find his mother doesn't happen until the end of the film. When the moment comes, Kitten is not resentful of the way he was left behind as he discovers that his mother has made a life for herself and her new reality.

The film is a delight because the work of Cillian Murphy. Mr. Murphy makes the delightful Kitten come alive. This is a tricky part to play and with the guidance of Mr. Jordan, this young actor makes the most of it. Equally excellent in smaller parts are Liam Neeson, Stephen Rea, Brendan Gleeson, Ruth Negg and Gavin Friday.

The brilliant collaboration between Mr. Murphy, the star, and Mr. Jordan, the director, pays off in many ways making this film the delight and fun it is to watch.

I saw the film at the NY Film Festival (with the actors in attendance), and I have to say that I loved it. In the film, Patrick "Kitten" Braden is an Irish baby who was abandoned by his mother on the doorstep of an uncaring stepmother. From the time he is a child, Kitten's cross dressing tendencies and his outspoken nature cause people to reject him (remember, this is Catholic Ireland in the 70s). Kitten grows up among the unrest of the IRA, but he is determined to be happy, and in order to be happy, he has to be himself (or herself). He goes to London, where he encounters all sorts of problems (they don't like the fact that he's Irish or a transvestite), but he keeps his optimistic nature despite all the hardship. The film is not about a person discovering himself (as so many coming-of-age movies are); it is about a Kitten knowing who she is and not changing her ways to please the world at large.

The direction and cinematography are amazing, but then this is Neil Jordan. Whatever problems you might have had with Interview With a Vampire, you can't deny that the movie was beautiful to look at. The same is true of all Jordan's films. He starts this film with a bird's eye view, and has many beautiful touches throughout. The chapter titles are hilarious. In particular, look out for the beautiful shot composition and direction of the scene between Kitten and her father in the peeping club. It's absolutely beautiful and well shot. Though he strays from the book (a lot), I believe the movie remains true to the character of Patrick, a charming, sometimes self-involved person who stubbornly makes his way through life. It must have been difficult to bring Kitten's active fantasy life to the screen, but Jordan helps us navigate between her fantasies and her reality with great skill.

The performances are the best thing about the film. Liam Neeson is always great, and this is no exception. Same goes for Stephen Rea. The actress who plays Charlie is someone to watch out for; she's great. The guy who plays Irwin did not impress me, but he wasn't bad. The movie, however, belongs to Cillian. Physically, he is suited for the role because he's so small, but it isn't just his appearance that helps. I've been watching Murphy's career since 28 Days Later, and I love his ability to switch between being really intimidating (Red Eye) or really vulnerable (How Harry Became a Tree); sometimes he's both in the same movie (28 Days Later). The man knows how to use his body to convey strength, or the lack thereof. Here, he is absolutely convincing as the witty Kitten, who desperately wants to be loved, but won't compromise her personality. You can see the hurt in his eyes when he is mistreated, but also the strength of his mind when he is determined to do something (witness the gun disposal scene and the police interrogation scene). Just because Kitten looks weak doesn't mean he is weak. When you least expect it, he summons a great amount of strength to pull through difficult situations.

I highly recommend the movie to anyone who has a chance to see it. It is hilarious, yet heartbreaking. The events related by Kitten are sad and terrible, but Kitten's sense of humor always shines through. The audience was in stitches the whole time. Was the movie perfect? No. Is it incredibly good, even great? Definitely.

Cillian Murphy ("Batman Begins," "Red Eye")gives a marvelous performance as Patrick "Kitten" Brady, a flashy transvestite who came of age in Ireland and Great Britain during the English government's battle with the Irish Republican Army in the 1970s.

Told in chapters, such as "When I was Out of My League," or "It's Tearing Me Apart," or "Phantom Ladies," there is not really a lot to recommend here except for Murphy's brilliant reading (one which may even cop him an Oscar nomination, but I doubt it) and a great soundtrack that plays everything from the Shadows to Bobby Goldsboro to Silver Convention to the Youngbloods, among others.

Abandoned as a baby in his small Irish hometown and aware from a very early age that he is different, Braden is an endearing, deceptively tough young man. He dresses in his foster sister's clothes and applies her lipstick, only to scandalize his cluck-clucking foster mother. In his teens, he gets into even more trouble with his Catholic school priests after writing a hard-core story of his birth (claiming that one of the parish fathers, Liam Neesom, is really his dad).

Taking a powder to London, he falls into the transvestite glam rock scene, taking small time show business jobs such as a costume-wearing Wombie with Brendan Gleeson ("Braveheart," "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire"), and a cheap suit magician's assistant with Stephen Rea ("The Crying Game," which was also about the IRA and transvestism). All the time he is searching for his real mother, the only clue to her identity is that she looks like Mitzi Gaynor.

His best friends Charlie and Irwin have a relationship, she gets pregnant, he gets killed by the IRA, he is implicated in the bombing of a British discotheque, falls into prostitution, peep shows and finally settles into sort of an ordinary life helping to raise Charlie's baby.

Directed by Neil Jordan ("The Good Thief," "The Crying Game"), this is an interesting picture carried - once again - by Murphy and the music and is based on the novel by Pat McCabe ("The Butcher Boy"). Also look for an interesting cameo by Brian Ferry as a homicidal maniac.

I have rather enjoyed Neil Jordan's films in the past. Things like "Interview With The Vampire" and "In the Company of Wolves" had a lovely surreal quality that appealed to me.

The movie follows the life story of Partick "Kitty" Bergen, a young Irishman abandoned by his mother in the 1960s. Growing up, he develops a penchant for dressing up as a woman, and is shockingly open about sex and sexuality, a quality that rankles with his adopted family and the other inhabitants of Irish village he grows up in. He decides to flee the village to and look for his mother...

Despite a strong central performance from Cillian Murphy as Kitty, not to mention quality turns from all the supporting cast, for me the movie didn't quite work. I found the long biographical structure of the story unnecessary, and I didn't think we needed to go into that much depth about Kitty's background. It would have been more fun if the film focused on his life as an adult. It would have provided the story with more of a centre and made the long running time much shorter.

Furthermore, actors such as Bryan Ferry, Liam Neeson and especially Jordan regular Stephen Rea were woefully underutilised and I would have liked to have seen some more of their characters.

A small disappointment from a film-maker I really admire.

Hilariously provocative, politic, Irish indeed, Breakfast on Pluto is an entertaining movie that gets you on tears sometimes. I find the main character somehow weak, too easily strayed from his unknown path, and even though his performance is top-class, I kinda longed for a moment of assertiveness until the time came when he was facing his long-lost mother and he decides to hide his identity. Good ending, realistic, believable with mother and son crossing their paths like the strangers they are. Liam Neeson fills the screen and not because we know him but (I guess this is great for a director) because he expresses the right emotions at the right time perfectly. There's no doubt about what he's going through when he utters his lines. Fantastic the camera work, those aerial shots at the beginning creating a vertigo that lets you down afterwards. I mean that it is the life of someone quite attached to the very basic stuff of life: body issue's, love longing and he never gets off this perspective, looking for any strand of love he can get. Even in the wrong places.

I was very disappointed in "Breakfast on Pluto." The film starts out promisingly enough, particularly with the all too quickly abandoned device of the gossiping robins who provide some narrative exposition. Patrick's speculative fantasy about his conception also suggests that the fantastic will continue to play a role in his/her respective adventures, but again, this fades all too quickly. Eventually, his/her constant refrain of "serious, serious, serious," become hard to take in light of the circumstances he/she comes to face.

It's hard to develop any real sympathy for Patrick/Patricia Kitten. Even when we learn the source of his/her private pain, it comes so long after he/she has already been established as vain-glorious and thoroughly self-involved that it's truly hard to care.

This is on top of the fact that besides being abandoned at birth, he/she seems to have been raised in a household whose sole restriction was that he/she not serve as a public embarrassment. While we might retrospectively recognize that his adopted mother's admonition that he repeat "I am not a girl" while roughly brushing him was not the most healthy response to his early trans-gender experimentation, the film offers little other reason for the audience to understand why Patrick was so rude to his adopted mother and sister.

The movie's truly "serious" moments show some promise, as the acting is quite good (Gavin Friday and Liam Neeson are standouts)and the situations truly serious, but it's hard to care when Patrick/Patricia's concern about these situations is so fleeting.

Some moments do stand out, particularly the scene in the abortion clinic and Fr. Benard's confession to Patrick/Patricia in the peepshow, but the rest of the film's most potentially poignant moments are cut short by the lead character's refusal to recognize the gravity of the situations in which he/she finds him/herself.