Teeming with self-righteous signifiers, this modest character study of a gay middle-aged bus conductor (Albert Finney) with fixations on Oscar Wilde (he puts on amateur plays at his very conservative Catholic church) and the hunky young bus operator who drives his route, ought to be unbearable. And we’ve not even mentioned that he regales his regular passengers with daily poetry recitations. I know, I know, you’re already fleeing for the exits. But director Suri Krishnamma and writer Barry Devlin consistently walk up to, then step back from the edge of embarrassment, making smart choices that keep the material a little too weird and off-kilter to drown from good intentions. 1963 Dublin (which might as well be 1923 Dublin) is caught with style & accuracy, and the petty squabbles of a little theatre group fit right into the modest epiphanies of what the film has in mind. Most of all, the acting is outstanding on all fronts, though even Finney can’t quite pull off that Oscar Wilde transfiguration of a climax. With Brenda Fricker (the ever hopeful sister still trying to fix up her bachelor brother); Michael Gambon (the butcher who turns on his friend when Wilde’s SALOME replaces THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST); having the scales fall from his eyes over his idealizations of a very young Rufus Sewell (the straight bus operator Finney quietly pines for) and Tara Fitzgerald as the unexpectedly impure Salome he finds riding his bus. The rest of the cast equally fine. So too the film.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Was this originally developed as a play? It did eventually turn into a chamber musical. Two limited-run New York productions, first with Roger Rees and then with Jim Parsons in the Finney role.
DOUBLE-BILL: In THE DRESSER/’94, a far more acclaimed, though perhaps lesser film, Finney plays an old-school Shakespearean actor trying to put on a production of LEAR during the London Blitz.
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