Lakelands – slow-burning exploration of rural isolation, sporting camaraderie and self-neglect (QFT until Thursday 11 May)

I’ve some understanding of the discipline required to be match fit for a sporting team. Readers who know me will be giggling. Obviously I’ve no personal experience – I’d think twice about running for a flight! – but back when I worked in IT, we had a placement student with us in the team for a year. Two or three nights a week, he rushed off at the end of the work day to catch a bus from the QUB Students’ Union to head home – Tyrone – for football training, returning in the wee small hours to grab some sleep before another day’s work. Then there’d be the GAA match at the weekend. Boozing was a no no. Such loyalty and commitment. And such a fear of the team coach that even if ill, the young lad would still travel down and turn up as the team’s full presence mattered whether you could play or not.

There are no passengers in the fictional team Cian (Éanna Hardwicke) plays for in Robert Higgins and Patrick McGivney’s new film Lakelands. At least, that what his GAA coach (Gary Lydon) says. The new season is just around the corner but some of the fellas are still refusing to treat their bodies like a temple and are sneaking out on the lash. A blow to the head outside a Cavan nightclub does little to improve Cian’s ‘form’ on top of the injury he’s already carrying. He lives at home in the Midlands, helping his emotionally repressed widower father (Lorcan Cranitch) with the heavy work on the family dairy farm. Can Cian cope with the pressure he’s under from all sides? Perhaps the greatest pressure is self-inflicted?

Hardwicke delivers a suitably moody and depressed performance for the taciturn lad who only gets a spark in his eye when he has a ball in his hand. Disruption to his doleful situation comes in the person of Grace (Danielle Galligan), an old flame who’s now a nurse in England but has returned home to care for her father. Galligan brings much needed warmth and understanding into the story, with Grace bringing perspective to the otherwise insular environs.

The film explores concussion, isolation and drinking culture, as well as what effect removal has on your identity and sense of belonging (whether that’s going to live and work in England, or being dropped from a team). Higgins and McGivney are to be commended for not supplying easy answers and neat solutions to every thread of the plot. That said, Lakelands is a slow burner, and what feels like a short story is stretched out over 100 minutes. Perhaps the frequent silences in the dialogue will give sporting audiences time to reflect on shortcomings in their own clubs. But for this outsider, the match could have been over long before extra time if the cinema had a button for 1.25 speed!

Lakelands is being screened at the Queen’s Film Theatre until Thursday 11 May.

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