All Good Children

Euro Puddings can fall victim to appeasing too many backers; with finance coming from left, right and centre the movies can be messy and muddled. That's not a problem for director Alicia Duffy and her debut film All Good Children - there's never a moment here when the audience suspects the director's vision isn't her own. Duffy exhibits a mature skill of patient storytelling and pulling out startling performances from such a young and inexperienced cast.

Coming of age first love stories can be as clichéd as they come but All Good Children thankfully veers off the beaten track. Irish brothers Dara (Gleeson) and Eoin (Brazil) are moved to France to stay with their aunt (Kate Duchene) when their mother dies. Out exploring one morning, Dara happens across Bella (Jones), an impressionable English girl who lives nearby with her ex-pat family. The two bond quickly and the friendship soon turns romantic. However, as Dara becomes increasingly obsessed and needy, Bella begins to pull away, which will have disastrous effects on his fractured and fragile mind...

Ah, first love – the unstoppable rush, the new experience, the insecurity, the beauty and the dark obsession. Okay, maybe not the latter so much but All Good Children isn't your typical First Love movie. Duffy wants to explore the destructive power of emerging sexuality: things are fine between the would-be couple – it's a sweet and tender relationship – until they happen across a manuscript with the word 'f**k' in it and Dara scrawls it across her newly painted white wall in black (one of the many subtle touches Duffy brings to the screen). Later, they find an old porn magazine. Then a gun is entered into their world. Innocence-sex-destruction-death – one quickly, and naturally, follows the other in this world.

Where Duffy excels and teasing out the story, and pulls a star-for-the-future performance from the impressive Jack Gleeson, she drops the ball when it comes to fleshing out the world and characters around Bella and Dara. Maybe because the movie is seen from Dara's point of view, and a young boy wouldn't concern himself with the goings on of adults, but it isn't clear who is who in the adult world and why Duffy feels compelled to touch on the relationship between Bella's brother and her father (David Wilmot). That said, this won't be the last we'll hear from the director.