Luke: Irish director’s new film presents five stories about home, love and belonging

Five thematically connected stories about home, love and belonging make up director Liam Ó Mocháin’s latest feature film, ABODE. 

In many respects this is a successor to his much enjoyed and lauded 2017 film Lost and Found, which followed the lives and possessions of comers and goers to a rural train station. 

With ABODE’s vast ensemble and (mostly) wholesome stories, Ó Mocháin is returning to, and playing with, a successful formula. 

I reviewed Lost and Found in 2018 and was thoroughly charmed by its “winsome worldview”. 

ABODE has a slightly harder edge than Lost and Found, but it’s rarely out and out bleak. 

The tone is less twee, not as cutesy as its predecessor. There’s more drama, more sex, and less sitcom-pacing.  

The structure, though, is nearly identical to Ó Mocháin’s earlier work – only without the framing element linking the stories. 

What does carry over is the series of vignettes, separated by interstitials focusing broadly on the same themes from different angles. 

Where Lost and Found used title cards to break up the stories, ABODE uses a little sketch style picture relating to the story. 

These tie into Ó Mocháin’s talent for setting up little mysteries in his writing. Breadcrumbing clues as to the true nature of the characters and situations in his stories. 

These sketches, vague and funny as they might seem, are another element that has you thinking about the story before it really begins.

To get into the particulars of each story is to explain away that mystery. The charm is here in abundance. 

Origins and characters

“Based on true events” – a common movie disclaimer – is appropriate, and again intriguing here, Ó Mocháin’s own life informs elements of each story.  

Homelessness, foster care and emergency accommodation were part of Ó Mocháin’s world and we see it now in his art. That same humanity that shone through in Lost and Found is ever-present here.  

The man himself appears throughout in various roles. In one story he’s wearing a wig, in others he appears as a bit player. Weaving himself and his experience into the fabric and the situation that his characters find themselves in. 

The principal characters in ABODE’s short stories are not overt oddballs like the visitors to the train station’s lost property office that populated Lost and Found’s  amusing and affecting vignettes.  

ABODE’s stories are, again, touching and  amusing. But there’s a development and refinement of the filmmaking that widens and deepens the scope of emotion and storytelling.

The characters feel more specific than the broader types that appeared in Lost and Found. The situations too.  

Situations

The chilling horror of your mother stepping out on a date with a year-round Bloomsday costumed Don Juan is the amusing stuff of waking nightmares. 

A later story sees a couple tell a white lie to get a complimentary bottle of wine. If you haven’t told someone somewhere that it’s your birthday to get a sparkler on a slice of cake or a table sing-song then you haven’t lived. 

All of these stories are, to some extent, relatable and recognizable – and as Lost and Found skewered and found a general ambient amusement with the smalltown life and times of its characters, ABODE broadens its scope but narrows its brush strokes to make its stories that bit more raw and real.

Of particular note is the cinematography by Joshua Brophy, which frames those incidental or banal details that Ó Mocháin takes interest in. 

In the first section, the interior of Wallace’s Asti – a wine bar – in the first story left in a hurry by manager Benedict (Ó Mocháin) lit up with low winter light, a little dusty. 

There are shots of countertops and sinks. The sense is that we are stepping into another day in someone’s life. Witnessing the ongoing struggles and victories. 

From a distance at first, but as the narratives become clearer the camerawork tends to pull closer as well. Many sequences end on a sort of parting glance, our view of one life ends and another one opens up before us in the next sequence. 

A later story features extensive wildlife photography of a snail working its way up a garden wall. It’s this attention to detail that lets these stories stand on their own more than they already do, stretches them out and lets them breathe. 

It’s all part of the gentle puzzles that Ó Mocháin creates in his writing and direction. There’s always a little mystery to figure out. What’s the significance of Carol’s straight-to-voicemail phone calls in the first sequence? 

Another mystery comes in the form and format of one of the vignettes about an AI-powered oven that seems more like a sequence from Tales From the Crypt compared to the stories that sit on either side.

Skyler (Gail Brady) names a new high-tech oven after herself. Through some quirk in the software the oven will only respond to her. This leaves husband Sam (Matthew O’Brien) unable to control the new appliance. 

The House of the Future, sci-fi tone is a cute juxtaposition to the young couple’s domestic quibbles and sex life, and there’s some amusing moments with the voice commands misinterpreting things. 

Ending

Where the story ends up is quite shocking, especially considering the tone set by the rest of the film. But Ó Mocháin enjoys having a final twist or turn on each story. 

This playing with expectations speaks to the general sense of confidence throughout ABODE. This is a surer-footed film than Lost and Found, even when those footsteps zigzag to unexpected places.

Ó Mocháin is more ambitious than before. Willing to experiment within his niche. 

The resulting stories are moving, heartfelt and always underpinned by a wry observational humour. 

ABODE is due to be released in cinemas in Ireland on Friday 7 November. 

Press materials tell of a long production period for it. I’ll be hoping to see more from Ó Mocháin sooner rather than later.