Sensation

Ireland may not have much of a national cinema but in recent years we have produced enough quirky little comedy-dramas to merit more than just a passing footnote in the annals of world cinema. Tom Hall's "Sensation" is one of the quirkiest.

It's about sex, particularly the commercial kind. Donal is the perpetually horny young farmer who hooks up online with escort Courtney/Kim and then goes into business with her. It's an original idea and it's nicely done, (and it's surprisingly dark). As the big-hearted hooker Luanne Gordon is excellent while Domhnall Gleeson is outstanding as the randy, overly trusting farmer. Minor it may be but it's certainly worth a look.

The script had promise of basically showing how a sexually repressed son of a sheep (chosen for a reason no doubt) farmer becomes a bit mercenary when his dad dies and he suddenly has some money to pay for this sexual shortcomings. With best, also semi- loser, friend he hooks up with an online call girl to start a similar business. A bit of greed and immaturity results in issues between them, with the legal system meting out justice. The major problem was a cheap production highlighted by poor audio levels; poor enunciation; and no subtitles so that particular UK (Irish) English dialogue, to non- native ears, was nearly impossible to follow.

The movie starts with an attention-grabbing scene of the Irish character Donal (Domhnall Gleeson) finding a place to masturbate with a girlie mag on his father's farm. He stops when he realizes the sheep are watching him. Donal's father sits dead on the stair lift when the farm lad arrives home, but Donal casually takes his time to bring him down by pushing the remote. Looking at a sex site, Donal then phones the attractive Courtenay (Luanne Gordon) to meet for sex, but she asks, and he agrees, to meet first at a café. He asks her to stay for dinner because he is hungry. Then strangely she says she is not used to such things as Donal interpreting the web profile saying she enjoys "going out to dinner" when her clients don't have to. The next scenes show that Donal wants to woo her like a girlfriend but unusually she seems slow to catch on to this. They connect at last and decide to go into the prostitution business together using the farm sale money. There is an argument in the 4WD between the two main characters which seemed like the most real scene in the movie to me, and made me keep watching. The boy-meets-girl movie then turns into a different movie – a pimp grows out of needing the girl movie. This is where the script needs work. Oops too late. The pace and scenes speed up so unrealistically when Donal suddenly becomes pimp-wise, so it then lost it for me. As a movie with current Irish feel and with the difference of having a NZ girl love interest, the movie has some intrigue. But as a movie portraying a highly-sexed Irish farm lad supposedly becoming a knowledgeable pimp the movie disintegrates.

The promised story, as worded in the film announcement, looked interesting. Pity is that I found the pace in which it developed, unbalanced. It had a slow start by showing some redundant scenes, while conversely we had several pieces of essential information later on that were treated too sketchy.

The actual story as it enfolded, was riddled with accidental events and encounters, to the extent that it was hard to believe that this could happen in the real world. Even in a book (comic or prose) such a series of events would seem far-fetched. Maybe there is some context that I missed?? All too predictable were the emotional reactions of the main characters, so that did not rescue the story either.

Finally, I had big problems with the language (dialect). Though considering myself reasonably fluent in English, I missed a lot due to the dialect used. I don't think this is acceptable for presentation to an international audience.

(2010) Sensation DRAMA

Written and directed by Tom Hall that has Donal/ Dolan Doogan (Domhnall Gleeson) stumbles onto his deceased father at home. And after the funeral service, he is then given options to sell the farm as well as it's sheep. And overhears relatives talking about him settling him down with a girlfriend as he is the only child. He then hooks up with an escort he finds online and it was at this point the beginning of their bond with his sleeping partner, Courtney (Luanne Gordon) as we find out it was the first time he has ever gotten laid or had a relationship. Once he agrees to sell his property to an investor, Mr. Liam Droomy (Owen Roe), part of the deal also includes letting him have the use of one of his apartment complexes. As it is was for the intention of it being used as an online escort service with his on and off relationship/ business partner, Courtney we find out her actually name is Kim. And helping Dolan with this escort business is also his best friend, Karl (Patrick Ryan). It was quite obvious, Dolan wants to settle down, while Kim has other plans that does not align with his. So he decides to hook up with a cashier he had met a few times earlier, Melanie (Kelly Campbell). Complicating matter is that it also happens to be illegal for what they were doing.

Although the movie does not derive away from it's point, I still had questions i wanted answers to. Such as what did he do when his dad was alive, I mean did he attended sheep at all! Dolan's relationship with his dad is kind of vague viewers would have to assume his only son would have helped him with the sheep farm to some extent and then suddenly it meant nothing to him anymore. So one can presume he had never worked on his dad's sheep farm at all. Who can a make a decent living as well.