Gerry (Aidan Gillen) travels to Singapore where his estranged brother, a bar owner who has possibly been involved in nefarious activities, has died in a drowning accident. It emerges that Gerry is running away from his own problems at home, and, as he becomes more immersed in a foreign culture and environment, taking on his brother’s mantle becomes appealing to him. The trouble is he is not exactly a suitable substitute for the dead man. The second feature from the team behind Helen and the acclaimed ‘Civic Life’ film programme, Mister John confirms Joe Lawlor and Christine Molloy as original and distinctive filmmakers. With a story involving snakebites, Asian superstition and dream sequences, it has a hallucinatory and poetic edge. It is an elegant, smart film with a wry and winning sense of humour and Gillen is mesmerising as a man falling apart at its centre.

Notes by Michael Hayden.