That They May Face the Rising Sun review – poignant rural meditation on life and friendship

The lay of the land … Barry Ward as Joe and Anna Bederke as Kate in That They May Face the Rising Sun. Photograph: Publicity image

‘Does anything happen, or is it the usual?” asks a regular loose cannon in Pat Collins’ rural-set Irish drama. “Not much in the way of drama, just the day-to-day stuff,” replies his writer friend. That’s very much the lay of the land in this film, with squirely novelist Joe Ruttledge (Barry Ward) serving as a proxy for John McGahern and his early-Joycean realism, and from whose lauded final 2002 novel this is adapted. By extension it speaks for Collins too, who remains a faithful follower of that approach – almost to a fault.

At some point in the 1980s, Joe and his wife Kate (Anna Bederke) – who is from some unspecified European country – have quit London to return to the Irish countryside of his upbringing. With him racking up the pages of a never-finished book, and her twisting local plants into art creations, there’s a bohemian tint to their household that attracts neighbours to their kitchen table. There’s “the Shah” (John Olohan), the big-eyebrowed garage owner tiptoeing into a new romance; Bill (Brendan Conroy), a subdued labourer condemned to working in slave-like conditions because he was “illegitimate”; and the aforementioned loose cannon Patrick (Lalor Roddy), never short of a chippy observation but always popping by like a man who needs company.

Ever-present in this tangle of middle-aged, makeshift friendships is an undertow of faint but inexorable melancholy, occasionally articulated in words (presumably) straight from McGahern. “The rain comes down, the sun shines, the grass grows, children grow old and die – that’s the holy all of it,” reflects the Shah. Nothing too purple, which would violate the terms of the quiet stoicism in the face of life’s grand rhythms admired by McGahern; Collins, more usually a documentarian, keeps in lyrical step with simple, stirring compositions of cloud-swept hillsides, rams teeming down lanes, and one especially moving sequence when Joe lays out a deceased acquaintance for his funeral.

This reserve means the drama verges on indistinct, with bravura camerawork out of bounds and sometimes timid characterisation that threatens to blur the multiple visitors into one Irish version of Ted, The Fast Show’s groundsman. The reticence is a particular issue with Joe and Kate, whose London allegiances, artistic aims and marital state of affairs are alluded to, but never fully explored. But, despite its somewhat diffuse centre, Collins’ film still has a straightforward poignancy, with subtle and dignified performances across the board.

• That They May Face the Rising Sun is in UK and Irish cinemas from 26 April.