Given a welcome big-screen re-run at UGC, Lenny Abrahamson's Adam and Paul is a rough diamond that follows 'dying sick' junkies Adam (O'Halloran) and Paul (Murphy) on their day-long purgatory through inner-city Dublin as they try to beg, borrow, scam or steal the money that will get them their next fix, with only an occasional toke to take the edge off. If that sounds like a bleak prospect, then be assured that script-writer O'Halloran has read and appreciated Beckett for his combination of black despair and blacker humour: rather than wait around for the elusive Godot, our latter-day Pozzo and Lucky tramp the streets in a Ulysses-style odyssey, encountering various friends, enemies and (for the most part) people who veer clear. Abrahamson makes wonderful use of Dublin's grimmer environs, O'Halloran has a wonderful ear for vernacular dialogue, and the central roles are excellently played, with Murphy just about claiming the laurels. Hauntingly dark and frequently touching, Adam and Paul is also hilarious: when the pair mistake a Bulgarian (Caramitru) on a park bench for a Romanian refugee, the enraged Bulgarian denounces Dublin as 'a shit-hole' on the basis that the city is full of "maniacs, liars and f**king Romanians." Assured and provocative, albeit indulgently sympathetic to its characters' addiction, this as good a film as you'll see all year.
