Written And Directed by John Butler
Dan (to Walter): "Some boys don't play rugby. What about those boys?"
With Pride Month fast approaching, there will be more LGBT themed blogs appearing on here. Specifically some Irish LGBT ones and this was a movie that was on my list to watch for a while.
Focusing on our protagonist, we've got private school student, Ned Roche (Fionn O'Shea). He's left at his current school by his father, Donal (Ardal O'Hanlon) and stepmother, Natalie (Amy Huberman) and his peers hate his guts, especially rugby lad, Weasel (Ruari O'Connor). The latter in particular took great pleasure in antagonising Ned.
Of course, it's not all bad for Ned. There's his new English teacher, Mr Dan Sherry (Andrew Scott), who spent the movie encouraging Ned's creativity and there was the arrival of Conor Masters (Nicholas Galitzine). The latter being something of a friend to Ned.
At first, Ned assumed that Conor was the stereotype of a rugby player and there was hints of Conor being expelled from his previous school for fighting. Ned and Conor bonded over music and danced around the issue of both of them being gay. Unfortunately for Conor, there were drawbacks to their budding friendship.
Notably there was rugby coach, Pascal O'Keeffe (Moe Dunford) who resented Conor's outside influences and went out of his way to derail them. However with Conor denying his friendship with Ned to protect himself, the latter rather cruelly outed him to the whole school. It's a moment where even the principal Walter Curly (Michael McElhatton) expressed disappointment in Ned.
As for Ned, he did regret his actions and he also went out of his way to try and amend things with Conor. There's a great moment where Conor's team ended up standing up for him, which did end the movie on a rather lovely note. There was also another coming out moment too that I particularly liked when Mr Sherry introduced Walter to his partner.
- John Butler has previously worked with Andrew Scott, Amy Huberman and Michael McElhatton on productions such as Your Bad Self and The Stag.
- The title of the movie ended up being the title of the essay that Ned wrote about his friendship with Conor.
- Standout music: The Housemartins Think For A Minute and Rufus Wainwright's Go Or Go Ahead.
- Chronology: 2010s Ireland.
Handsome Devil is a delightful coming of age movie that's more about a friendship between the two leads than a romance. I think that worked better than expected for this movie with both Fionn O'Shea and Nicholas Galitzine on great form. Andrew Scott also gave a brilliant supporting performance too.
Rating: 8 out of 10
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