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A Film With Me In It (Film)
Rating: M
Running Time: 89
Country: Ireland
Director: Ian Fitzgibbon
Cast: Keith Allen, Mark Doherty, Amy Huberman, Dylan Moran, David O'Doherty
Distributor: Beyond
Film Worth: $8.00
Release Date: April 23, 2009 (Melbourne, Brisbane) May 3 (Adelaide, Sydney)
“...less-than-satisfying...”
"There's three people in a house, and there's an accident, and somebody ends up dead. Then there's another accident, and two are now dead. Nobody killed anybody," explains out-of-work actor Mark (Mark Doherty) as the long exposition of the none-more-dark black comedy A Film With Me In It ends and denouement commences. "That's bollocks. Nobody does that any more. It doesn't work," replies wastrel wannabe writer/director Pierce (Dylan Moran playing himself again). Mark lives in a decrepit basement flat with soon-to-be ex-partner Sally (Amy Huberman) and his wheelchair-bound brother David (under-utilised David O'Doherty). Mark's forever plotting the ideal film with fellow rent-dodger Pierce, who lives upstairs, while trying to avoid their bastard landlord Jack (Lily Allen's dad Keith, who's had plenty of practice "getting [his] fucking money" as the Sheriff Of Nottingham on TV's Robin Hood). By the time Mark and Pierce are having this conversation, the series of horrible freak deaths have begun, and their plotting to dispose of the ever-growing pile of bodies without being implicated enables them to devise the ideal film with Mark in it.
This may be an analogy for the plight of talented people in the modern world; it may even be an Irish Modernist meta-fiction in the tradition of novelist Flann O'Brien (although it ought to be shot from the point-of-view of the corpses - which would add significantly to the horror and the comedy - in that case); it's certainly a film that, appealing more to the head than the heart, delivers less laughs than you'd expect from the likes of Dylan Moran and David O'Doherty. The epilogue leaves you feeling hollow and empty, but as a less-than-satisfying film concludes, you may also realise that this is entirely the point.