Eamon

Showing at the Toronto International Film Festival: Eamon, directed by Margaret Corkery

Synopsis from the TIFF website:

Made for less than five hundred thousand dollars, Eamon plays like the most expensive low-budget film you've ever seen. The result is a fabulously fresh and highly entertaining first feature.

Selfish, bratty little Eamon (Robert Donnelly) shoos his father aside for a privileged place in his mother's heart. King of her bed and dictator of all things quotidian, he leaves no space in her affections for anyone but himself, having banished his father to what feels like a distant planet – a planet where touching your spouse is punishable and sleeping on the couch mandatory. Lonely and sexually frustrated, brooding Daniel (Darren Healy) covers himself head to toe while bikini-clad Grace (Amy Kirwan) actively pretends he doesn't exist. Though he might not look it, their son is well aware of the parental climate and does his best to keep amorous heat waves at bay. Sitting between them every chance he gets, he insulates one from the other to make it easier to get what he wants – which is just about everything. Monopolizing attention and eliminating sexual desire is what Eamon does best.

A bright, satirical drama with dark overtones, Eamon follows this idiosyncratic trio on a family holiday of sorts, intended to give them a break from their dire financial straits. Unfortunately, salvation does not sprout on the Irish coast, and sooner or later they come face to face with their problems. Too bad one of the three has no interest in seeing them resolved.

Unexpectedly granted funds and full creative control by Ireland's Catalyst Project, a government initiative designed to nurture budding filmmakers, Margaret Corkery stripped her first feature down to its bare essentials: three leads, an uncluttered narrative and the merest sprinkling of ancillary characters. The film's strength lies in the details. One of the most important elements in Eamon is the weather: it might be sunny outside, but it's certainly raining in the master bedroom.