Villagers friday

“The Fritter away of the Country” is a very insignificant movie, very charming and very, very Irish.

Set in a minuscule village in County Cavan just a few miles south of the Northern Ireland border, the picture focuses on the relationship between an aging police sergeant (Albert Finney) and his only son, Danny (Matt Keeslar), during the weeks after the death of their beloved “Mom” (played in flashback by Dearbhla Molloy).

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At 18, Danny doesn’t quite know what to do with himself. His mother has always been his prime source of encouragement, and her death dealt him a powerful blow. Mom had always wanted Danny to go to university, to make something of himself. Now that she’s gone, he isn’t so sure.

At first Dad isn’t so sure either. He insists that Danny lace up the apron and, in his words, “learn the cooking ropes.” Soon, however, after Danny has run away to live with his scoundrel friend Prunty (Anthony Brophy), Dad abruptly changes his tune. He wants Danny to get out of town before he gets into real trouble. But while he’s making plans for Danny to live with his aunt in New York, Danny meets a brilliant lass from the other side of the border.

Before long, Danny, who has a poetic streak, is telling Annagh (Victoria Smurfit) that she has “ears like seashells and eyes like flashing stars.” New York, he tells his father, is out of the question. He loves Anna, and that’s that. He’s staying.

As director Peter Yates sets them up, these conflicts are believable enough, but at times the filmmakers’ attitude toward Danny is confusing. (Shane Connaughton adapted the screenplay from his own novel.) It’s not clear, for example, whether the two are at each other’s throats because of Danny’s rebelliousness or because he’s a mama’s boy, too sensitive to face up to life’s cold facts.

As usual, Finney is perfection as the stubborn old cop who’s waited his whole life for a murder—”just one little murder that only I can solve,” he prays at Mass—to make his name. As Danny, Keeslar is likable and affecting. Also, Smurfit is as lively as she is beautiful. And as good as Finney is, it’s Brophy who turns in the movie’s most memorable performance. With his matted, oily hair hanging around his face like a dirty shroud, he ricochets through the movie guffawing and parceling out sage wisdom on all subjects, from the aphrodisiac properties of cloves to the morality of mixed nude bathing. From the start, it’s his energy that drives the movie and, ultimately, breaks up its quaint, literary symmetries with his prickly, irreverent spirit.

The Run of the Country is not rated.