July 20, 2024

_Traveller _follows an arranged marriage of fire and fisticuffs, with cross-border criminality for a honeymoon and emotional inarticulateness as a dowry, all in the shadow of past abuse and present Troubles. Despite familiar themes of familial violence, estrangement, and exile, Comerford produces a distinctly cinematic, Irish reelism, with voiceover and flashbacks, while moving towards the allegorical realism of his later work. To do so, he worke… read the rest.

_Traveller _follows an arranged marriage of fire and fisticuffs, with cross-border criminality for a honeymoon and emotional inarticulateness as a dowry, all in the shadow of past abuse and present Troubles. Despite familiar themes of familial violence, estrangement, and exile, Comerford produces a distinctly cinematic, Irish reelism, with voiceover and flashbacks, while moving towards the allegorical realism of his later work. To do so, he worked closely, as in _Down the Corner_, with a screenwriter (Neil Jordan), a marginalized community (Irish Travellers), important Irish cineastes (O’Sullivan and Black), and non-professional actors, particularly quiet-man/musician Davy Spillane and dubbed/bird-in-a-cage Traveller Jody Donovan.

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