Aubrey Malone
Photo: PickPiK In Trad, a rebellious young fiddle player Shona (Megan Nic Fhionnghaile) leaves her Donegal Gaeltacht home to find herself through her music. She joins a band and lives a hippie lifestyle of hitch-hiking, camping and busking with her sort-of boyfriend Ray (Cathal Coade Palmer) whom she hooks up with on the rebound from the older, surlier Frod (Henrique Zaga).
Ray starts by pining for her but then, inexplicably, it flips around and she’s the needy one. How come? It’s a headscratcher.
This interesting new feature written, produced and directed by Lance Daly (Black 47) might have fared better as a documentary. Things get ropey when he tacks on a plotline.
The music, however, is to die for. It’s drunk music. You’ll find it impossible not to stamp your foot to it as these ‘craic’ merchants enter into it with undaunted relish. (What’s the difference between a bodhrán and a trampoline? You take your boots off before jumping on a trampoline).
It’s a pity about so much else in the film. There’s a sassy script, with everyone trying to out ‘wit’ everyone else. Then there are the knowing glances between the eclectic crew, the contrived repartee. As Shona says at one point, “You know what you should do? Talk less, play more.”
Trad purports to be a rite of passage tale, a generation gap setting it off. Shona thinks she hates traditional music but concludes it’s only her overbearing mother (Sarah Greene ), whom she associates with it, that she hates.
She sloughs off the coat of convention to go native, nailing her phone to a car dashboard to transmit her intentions.
Shona brings her kid brother Mickey (Dallán Woods) with her. Mickey could swear for Ireland. He shares this tendency with most of the cast. This is unfortunate. When someone throws an expletive into every other sentence they lose their effect. Out of the mouths of veritable babes like Mickey, they become boring. Daly is too good a director to strive overhard for these kinds of effects.
Aidan Gillen is the impish band manager. As Shona observes, he speaks mostly in riddles. He wears so much white he’s like an ice cream. Daly doesn’t know what to do with him, so he just has him faffing around the place in a funny hat. Wearing a funny hat doesn’t make you funny.
Anyone who reads this column will know I like Gillen as an actor. But he doesn’t belong in this film. He’s like a fifth wheel. So are many others in his ragbag troupe. Ann Skelly (Nugget) also has a thankless role. She can’t have more than a dozen lines. Against this stumbling block she does remarkably well to create a character.
Go to Trad for the music. That’s where it shines. The plot tropes aren’t much more than celluloid Polyfilla. But all is forgiven in the climactic Fleadh scene where Daly finally lets the music do the talking.