I Could Read the Sky

this solipsistic sludge is littered with cinematic allusion - Murnau, Robert Montgomery, Greenaway, Sirk, Ruiz, Ter(r)ences Malick and Sirk - but, as you would expect from an Irish film, its heart is in literature, the torrential monologue of Molly Bloom, the bleak spurtings of Beckett. The star is even a famous writer, Dermot Healy (his jerky, slashing performancce is the best thing in the film). Like Joyce, the film errs in overrating the complexity of the human brain; at any rate, the synthetic effects, visual treacle and Harp-ad-like music very quickly pall. Then exasperate. Then numb.