Mis­ter John

If Joe Lawlor and Chris­tine Molloy’s 2008 film, Helen, was their som­nam­bu­lic homage to Michelan­ge­lo Antonioni’s swing­ing mime-ten­nis clas­sic, Blow-Up, then their remark­able, Lynchi­an noir-tinged fol­low-up, Mis­ter John, could be seen as a cool appro­pri­a­tion of Antonioni’s The Pas­sen­ger. It’s a film which traces the tip-toed steps of a man who is giv­en the very real oppor­tu­ni­ty of slink­ing into the shoes of some­one close to him who has died.

Sto­ries in which char­ac­ters switch iden­ti­ties in order to expe­ri­ence the lives of oth­ers are usu­al­ly riv­en with con­ceit­ed pro­vi­sos, high­fa­lutin exis­ten­tial waf­fle and hack­neyed inevitabil­i­ties (will they get caught?!). But with Mis­ter John, Lawlor and Mol­loy have some­how man­aged to trans­form this com­bustible blue­print into some­thing that’s haunt­ing­ly, trag­i­cal­ly real­is­tic and bizarrely fun­ny to boot.

It begins with a corpse, float­ing face-down in a lake. We’re told it’s the broth­er of Ger­ry (Aidan Gillen) who must imme­di­ate­ly jet off from Lon­don to an unnamed Asian locale (Mis­ter John was filmed in Sin­ga­pore) in order to be there for his fam­i­ly. Gerry’s moti­va­tions for tak­ing this trip appear benign enough; the logis­tics of the tragedy require a per­son­al pres­ence. Yet as soon as he arrives, he’s ush­ered down some strange psy­cho­log­i­cal byways. He treats this enforced, exot­ic sou­journ as a chance to start anew, to hasti­ly rec­ti­fy the defi­cien­cies of his own chron­i­cal­ly banal and sex­u­al­ly frus­trat­ed exis­tence back home and a chance for him to act as heir to his brother’s impul­sive and occa­sion­al­ly dan­ger­ous lifestyle.

From that descrip­tion, it would seem a fair­ly easy task to join the debauched nar­ra­tive dots as we observe a man defi­ant­ly reject­ing cosy bour­geois politesse and allow­ing vice and deprav­i­ty to reign supreme. But Mis­ter John is not that film. Lawlor and Mol­loy have recog­nised the rich dra­mat­ic poten­tial of hav­ing a man des­per­ate­ly attempt­ing to stick to his ingrained puri­tan spir­it as he is beck­oned, coquet­tish­ly, to take a walk on the wild side. Even the effects of a shock snake bite appear to mock Gerry’s latent desire to play away from his wife. While it might have been far eas­i­er for them to film a daisy-chain of squalid East­ern iniq­ui­ty, their choice to take the tough route of extreme inner tur­moil has yield­ed extra­or­di­nar­i­ly emo­tion­al results.

Now some may call bull­shit on the fol­low­ing state­ment, but Gillen is a per­former who’s nev­er quite reached his true poten­tial on screen. This despite a num­ber of charis­mat­ic sup­port­ing turns in pop­u­lar TV seri­als (Game of Thrones, The Wire) and home­grown dra­mas (The Low Down, Trea­cle Jr). His work in Mis­ter John, how­ev­er, is far and away his strongest to date, an invert­ed pow­er­house of brood­ing tough guy brava­do, a tan­gle of jit­tery, bare­ly-hid­den neu­roses that pre­vent him from putting his libido into any kind of hard action.

As a char­ac­ter, Ger­ry is not an aveng­ing angel or sex­u­al mes­si­ah. Cin­e­ma is a medi­um in which audi­ences are habit­u­al­ly cal­i­brat­ed to cheer the con­queror and pun­ish the pathet­ic, and on those terms, Ger­ry sits at an intrigu­ing impasse. It’s as if Lawlor and Mol­loy are con­tent to enquire deep­er into this frail human psy­che than mere­ly paint Ger­ry as a love­able rogue or taint­ed drifter. The bina­ry con­cept of good and evil has been entire­ly excised from this film. The harsh strains of real­i­ty, though, haven’t.