This movie from screenwriter Ailbhe Keogan and director Claire Dix is well intentioned – but it’s broad, and for me it does not really do justice to the seriousness of its euthanasia theme. There’s an odd, strained naivety here which goes right up to the silliness (and illegality) of its sentimental climactic scene on a lake.
Barry Ward (from Ken Loach’s Jimmy’s Hall) does his hyperactive utmost with the role of Leon, a recovering smack addict in Dublin and would-be musician who is devoted to his 12-step mentor Iver, a tough-talking old guy who saved him from drugs; this is a fierce performance from veteran player Liam Carney. But Iver is seriously unwell and Leon is astonished one morning when calling round to his flat to find him with a plastic hood over his head and a nurse, Maria (Maureen Beattie), with her fingers on the gas nozzle, apparently doing a dummy run for euthanasia or maybe the actual thing itself.
Angry and impassioned, Leon rips off the hood and insists on wheeling Iver into the sunlight for a last trip to the pub, a last trip to see his mates, and maybe figures the outing will change his mind about the whole “exit” business. In the course of their Narcotics Anonymous meetings, Leon and Iver had to acknowledge the existence of a higher power and, to satirise the silliness of religion, they chose the Norse gods, so their shared joke is the blue makeup and Viking helmets.
I have to say that their “Valhalla” ending is unconvincing in a real-world context of what you actually can and can’t do to bring about assisted death without finding yourself in court, and it leaves the whole film on a kids-TV level of plausibility. But Ward, Carney and Beattie give sincere performances.
• Sunlight is released on 16 June in UK and Irish cinemas.
