On the Surface of Horrors

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

The director Neil Jordan has always been attracted to modern fairytale blends of sexually fraught self-expression and love amidst darker forces. This approach has led to beguiling studies like “Mona Lisa,” “The Butcher Boy,” and his most famous film,”The Crying Game.” “Breakfast on Pluto,” his new film based on the Patrick McCabe novel, is one of his successes, but on its own terms.

Some won’t feel enough affection and protectiveness for the hero, Patrick “Kitten” Brady, to enjoy this picaresque film. But there is something more to “Breakfast on Pluto” than just Kitten’s charm, and it starts with the unabashed revival of hope.

It’s hard to talk about “Pluto” without reciting Kitten’s story just as he would. We hear the routine several times: His nickname derives, implausibly, from a saint’s moniker, and he’s looking for his lost birth mother. She is said to bear a striking resemblance to Mitzi Gaynor, a star of 1950s musicals.Is there hope for Kitten (as he might say) in the search for this phantom lady?

Kitten (Cillian Murphy) starts out abandoned on a doorstep, the product of a brief union between a randy priest and his housekeeper. The happenstance of his origin marks his tale, buoyed by exuberance and naive abandon. Kitten spins the dross of his beginnings in a small Irish town into pre-disco gold, still on the margins but front and center in his own mind.

While still at school, teenage Patrick writes a cheeky essay that imagines the tryst that led to his conception: The movie cuts to a shot of his father literally flying across the kitchen to pounce on his mother-to-be. Likewise, much of this playfully passionate film is an illustration rather than a drama, replete with a comic book’s episodic structure, colors alternated with dark shadows, and a sweeping dynamism. The full-lipped, cream-pallored Mr. Murphy talks in a breathy voice throughout, barely heard and yet always there, a commentary and a talk bubble.

Young Patrick embroiders the collar of his gray school uniform with a spray of wildflower designs, and this seed of fancy blooms in the cavalcade of events – and inspired dress – that splashes across the screen. After giving up on his prickly adopted mother,he hits the road. Soon he takes up with a glam-rock band and falls hard for the lead singer, Billy (Gavin Friday). They perform a duet together, with Kitten dressed as a squaw.

Kitten stays at Billy’s lakeside trailer, which houses an IRA weapons cache. When a bomb kills a friend, he heaves the guns into the sea, and is nearly murdered for it. He takes up streetwalking but almost gets killed, and then becomes a magician’s assistant. After almost dying yet again at a discotheque bombing, he is tortured by a police officer, who later cares enough to shepherd him into a strippers’ cooperative.

If all that sounds more perverse than the happy-go-lucky jaunt first advertised, it only reflects how our narrator skitters on the surface of horrors. Kitten has an easy brotherhood with everyone he encounters, and in that there is a virtue, a simplicity, and an unassuming spirituality.


The New York Sun

© 2025 The New York Sun Company, LLC. All rights reserved.

Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. The material on this site is protected by copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used.

The New York Sun

Sign in or  Create a free account

or
By continuing you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use