A DATE FOR MAD MARY (2016)

A Date for Mad Mary, Darren Thornton’s LGBTQ comedy-drama about a young woman struggling to reconcile her competing identities, effortlessly balances sentimentality and bitterness. Plot beats regularly convince viewers that a sweet, trite film will come to the fore, only for Thornton to plunge his protagonist straight back into misery. A comedic montage suggests the film isn’t all that interested in realism—until a heart-stoppingly bittersweet reflection on self-hatred and the gulf that time creates between former friends blossoms on screen.

Mary (Seána Kerslake) is a volatile young woman whose violent outbursts have just landed her in prison for assaulting a woman at a nightclub. When we first meet her, she’s being released. She lands on her feet—sort of—with a job at a fast-food joint, whilst moving back in with her mother and grandmother. All three women’s lives are faintly miserable,but never so much that the film becomes dour. A Date for Mad Mary is always willing to laugh at their folly, whether it’s Mary’s immaturity, her mother’s desperate attempts to shack up with any man in sight, or her grandmother’s bleak comments about the neighbours and her daughter’s woeful dating life.

Mary is a mess, defined mostly by a blank incuriosity about life and her own emotions. She doesn’t know why she lashes out at strangers in fits of rage, exploding as if she’s just been woken by a cannon shot. She can’t understand why her best friend Charlene (Charleigh Bailey)—now preparing for her wedding—doesn’t want to go on nights out with her anymore. She’s blind to how her destructive behaviour has sown distrust amongst her loved ones. And she can’t, for the life of her, figure out why she has zero interest in finding a date for the wedding, where she’s somehow still the maid of honour.

Whilst her anger remains a mystery to her, the rest is patently obvious to the audience. Watching Mary slowly reach these conclusions should be aggravating, but it’s painful and beautiful in equal measure. Beneath a tortured web of foul language, mood swings, and a contemptuous attitude lie untapped reserves of gentleness. Slow to mature, basic facts of adulthood haven’t yet dawned on her. She’s extreme in her self-absorption, treating first dates like obstacles she can’t be bothered to overcome—confronting suitors with a slack-jawed, dead-eyed hollow stare. They’re just disembodied parts of a blurry procession of people she has no desire to understand.

It doesn’t take a genius to realise Mary’s attractions lie elsewhere, but watching this epiphany take hold is a wonder nonetheless. The realisation that she’s attracted to Jess (Tara Lee), the videographer booked for Charlene’s wedding,opens up a world of possibility and hope. Watching the protagonist’s near-permanent scowl vanish into a genuine smile is like witnessing a sunrise over a distant valley. The story is written across Kerslake’s face—a minor shift in expression reveals exactly what will happen next.

Thankfully, the wider narrative isn’t nearly so predictable. It offers a true-to-life depiction of aimlessness, the weird void of growing up, the affliction of self-ignorance, the boundaries of friendship, and the terrifying risk of love.Thornton and his co-writer brother, Colin, etch out unpredictability by never letting Mary settle. She’s always in motion, as though life itself is daring her to drop her defensive stance. She hardly notices what others are going through, yet seems too disaffected to afford herself pity or reflection.

Many of Mary’s interactions test her patience, forcing her to rein in her impulses around Charlene’s contemptuous friend Leona (Siobhan Shanahan)—who, in fairness, has every right to turn up her nose at such a bratty protagonist.Yet rather than lording over Mary’s recklessness, the film also prods at Leona’s pathetic, behind-the-back ridiculing, as well as the ways an ordered life has turned Charlene into a patronising, small-minded bore. Nobody is perfect; the only one who comes close is Jess, purely because she’s more humble and less self-interested than the rest.

Jess is the only character who could do with deeper psychological exploration, but Mary’s failure to see what makes her tick fits her self-absorption and blossoming sexuality. There’s a richer inner world there that Mary simply can’t process yet. She’s completely lost, but rather than letting the film turn on sexual orientation anxiety, A Date for Mad Mary is mature enough to recognise that the girl of Mary’s dreams isn’t a magical cure-all for her cracked psyche.

Mary is simultaneously a loveable goofball, an irritating, self-absorbed idiot, a physical threat, and a tragic figure. A Date for Mad Mary won’t win awards for structural originality, nor will its modest budget deliver jaw-dropping cinematography. But those aren’t the areas where it stakes its claim. The film’s brilliance comes from recognising that our lives are a chaotic mixture of comedy and drama, and that because we’re often unable—or unwilling—to figure ourselves out, our struggles remain endlessly amusing, pitiful, depressing, and hopeful.

IRELAND | 2016 | 82 MINUTES | 1.85:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

director: Darren Thornton.
writer: Darren Thornton & Colin Thornton.
starring: Seána Kerslake, Tara Lee, Charleigh Bailey, Denise McCormack, Siobhan Shanahan, Barbara Brennan, Norma Sheahan & Ben Condron.