The Tiger's Tail

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The Tiger's Tail

Dan Fainaru in San Sebastian
Screendaily

Dir/scr: John Boorman. Ire-UK. 2006. 106mins.


John Boorman's admirers, uneasily awaiting his latest feature after the disappointment of Country Of My Skull, can rest easy. Back on familiar ground – Dublin – and reunited with a sterling Brendan Gleeson, The Tiger's Tail is an alternately funny and thoughtful doppelganger story that may well see the veteran Irish director enjoy a good profile at box-offices worldwide. His most satisfying film since The General may not be as profound or complex as some of his earliest work but it is certainly as entertaining.

Although the device of relaying a narrative through identical twins is hardly new - it has been used before for anything from horror (Dead Ringers) to broad comedy (Twins) - Boorman's approach puts his own personal stamp on the theme, making for a smart and perspicacious work very much related to the new face of Ireland.

Initially his tale of two twins separated at birth - one now a successful businessman, the other a bum - works pretty well as a comedy but it then gains in perspective and depth once when transposed into a contemporary context. Fast-paced, and almost playing like a thriller at a certain moments, this is one of those rare items that is bound to please most critics and wide audiences as well. The film screened at San Sebastian.

Liam O'Leary (Brendan Gleeson) is a tough, ruthless businessman, a real estate developer swinging millions of euros in and out of his bank accounts and bribing top politicians to obtain all the permits he needs.

His marriage to Jane (Kim Cattrall) is going somewhat stale after 20 years and the good-humored rebellious tendencies of his 16-year-old son, Connor (Briain Gleeson, son of Brendan), who deems himself a communist, are only to be expected at his age.

O’Leary dotes on his mother (Moira Deady), who is much closer to his older sister Oona (Sinead Cusack); the only thing that troubles him when we first meet him, stuck in a massive traffic jam, is that his bribes have still not gained him planning permission for a multi-million pound stadium. Without the permit he can get no bank credit, throwing a spanner into the wheels of the smooth capitalist machine he keeps running at top speed.

As he slowly crawls home in his Mercedes, he is shocked to glimpse, just for a moment, his exact double, busily washing his windscreen. From this moment on his life turns upside down through a series of shocks. First he discovers that he was adopted, then who his biological mother is, before finally realising that he has a twin brother.

Before he can do anything, his brother (Gleeson also) - who remains nameless for the rest of the piece – takes over his life, replacing him both in his wife's bed and at his office. Boorman’s twist is that this imposter, who initially acts both to seek revenge for his lot in life and to get his hands on quick money, eventually realises that this alternative life is not as much fun as he envisaged.


Boorman's script starts so brilliantly that it risks losing steam later on, peppered as it is with quotable one-liners (Liam describes his haunted conduct after first seeing his twin as like "living in a Kafka novel and quoting Hamlet"; he also states that "the more homes you build, the more homeless there are"). But the impetuous Brendan Gleeson, who brilliantly plays both brothers, avoids such pitfalls.

One may be tempted to wonder how supporting characters in the story cannot tell the brothers apart, given the plethora of identification methods such as DNA testing. But such trifles will not worry audiences as Boorman sarcastically comments on all aspects of modern Ireland from the health service and drunken teenagers to politics and what's wrong with lawyers.

There are clever touches, such as calling a rogue priest Moriarty (as in Sherlock Holmes' nemesis). But Boorman also knows how to play a different register, reflecting on problems of identity – doppelgangers are not only a metaphor for schizophrenia but also identity confusion - or explaining the high toll of teen suicide attempts in Ireland as "suicide bombers protesting against what we have become".

The ending, which is somewhat reminiscent of the departure point in novels like Pirandello's The Late Mathias Pascal or films like Sacha Guitry's La Vie d'Un Honnete Homme, seems almost arbitrary by comparison.

Efficiently shot and cut, Boorman relies on a solid line-up of supporting roles, with Gleeson's son, Briain, playing the Marxist teenager with the casual confidence of a trooper. Ciaran Hinds brings compassion to the understanding priest, while Kim Cattrall contributes a shot of classic glamour.
"What the hell?"
Win Butler
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