In love

Regular readers of the blankpaige, yes both of you, will know that this girl has shared some painful insights of late. Some of you good people were even kind enough to send me a little note of encouragement. Some went as far as to concur that, listen sisters, men are bastards.

So I feel a mixture of unbridled joy and acute embarrassment this evening, as I feel compelled to announce to all in Blogosphere - "I am in love!"

Now I've noticed that being in love isn't something that bloggers announce very often. There are plenty of my man/god/bookclub/credit card company has just dumped me and I'm going to take solace in a nice big bowl of Ben&Jerry ice cream/bottle of Chateauneuf du pape/Czech builder who is hung like a stag.

It is the same with songs. All the best ones are laments to love lost. All our best writers are missing something and our best painters are troubled. Performance artists and troubadour musicians battle the dark side. Even our best comedians are, we believe, secretly hiding something sinister.

(Admission to Omani. I’ve just deleted five paragraphs which attempted to weave a whole story about my new love. But I realise that I’ve pulled that stunt once too often. Is this the reason why you heartlessly call me a fibber?)

I don’t know how I missed it when it came out. I know that over the past year I have read every newspaper ever sold, distributed or force on me by an enthusiastic Brazilian in O’Connell Street. I realize those ‘so cool they piss ice cubes’ cinema critics in the Ticket must have written five whole articles extolling the wonder, then three more panning the crassness and then made much mileage in snide side remarks. But I can’t explain how I missed it.

But last night, a good pal and I sat in with a bottle of Chateauneuf (alas no Czech builder) and watched what I now realise is the best Irish movie ever made. The movie is based on a novel written by one of our best authors. The screenplay was written by the author and the film’s director, a man with a cannon of work of John Huston proportions. Our best male actor plays the lead role. It is the best movie despite featuring a cast of the usual Irish suspects (Gleeson, Rea and Neeson) and Van Morrison music. It is set in the most depressing decade of our country’s recent past, it tackles a theme of exploitation of innocence and yet it is joyously uplifting.

And if you haven’t yet seen it. Check it out at once. This is without doubt the best Irish movie of the last 20 years and probably the best European film of the same period. I can’t understand why it hasn’t run for weeks and weeks in our cinemas. Why hasn't some Roscommon TD on the make not insist that this be added to the Leaving Cert curriculum? Go figure.

Blankpaige