Though the Tribeca Film Festival lineup can be notoriously inconsistent and impossible to predict what will actually be worth watching, I've noticed an impressive track record for Irish films at the festival. In 2008 there was the gut-wrenching family drama Eden, 2009 had the supernatural love story The Eclipse, and this year offers My Brothers, an inconsistent but remarkably tender and affecting story about three brothers on an accidental road trip as they cope with the fact of their father's imminent death.
Teenage Noel (Timmy Creed) has been given much of the duty of taking care of his younger brothers Paudie (Paul Courtney) and Scwally (T.J. Griffin) while their mother tends to their ailing father, and it's clearly taking its toll. As a sentimental gesture Noel borrows his father's cheap wristwatch, but it's immediately broken by school bullies, leaving Noel both distraught but with a concrete plan rather than the aimless grief he's been feeling. Bringing along Paudie to help him drive the car and Scwally because he threatens to tell otherwise, Noel drives with his two brothers across the Irish countryside to reach the decrepit seaside town where his father first won the watch at an arcade-- a pitiful location for such an important memento in the boy's life.
A few elements of the road trip story stretch credulity, from Noel believing the only place to find another cheap wristwatch is the same arcade claw game to the cute female pub employee who puts the brothers up for the night when their car breaks down, and happens to have a huge supply of 3D glasses to watch the night's big TV movie. Luckily the complicated dynamic between the three brothers, and the sheer enjoyment of watching them all together. is given far more attention than the strained plot, and director Paul Fraser delicately guides his young actors to relate to one another in a way that instantly creates family chemistry, even when no one in that bread van is saying a word.
My Brothers is so slight and heartfelt that it's practically a wisp, and it's hard to imagine a major distribution future for the film, despite the easily accessible family drama at its center. But it makes for the perfect festival surprise, a movie that's about death but not glum, that's about hardship but not strident, and that's about a family that, despite the specifics of their quest, feels unquestionably real and relatable.
