ANIMALS

Thanks to science, modern medicine and generally just knowing better, the life expectancy of a human being is no longer 38.3 years (soz 1880). Which means that these days the “growing up” part of life is a little more delayed. When #adulting is a thing among 30-year-olds - seeking praise because they went to bed before 1am and didn’t binge that latest Netflix hit - you know we have a problem. And what better way to highlight the plight of the privileged white middle class than independent cinema.

Based on Emma Jane Unsworth’s 2014 novel of the same name, ‘Animals’ follows 32-year-old Laura (Holliday Grainger ‘My Cousin Rachel’) and her BFF Tyler (Alia Shawkat, TVs ‘Arrested Development’) in their hedonistic life in Dublin. Disturbingly codependent (they sleep in the same bed), the pair live off a steady diet of booze, drugs and eight-minute sexcapades in the bathroom of whatever local alcohol dispensary they happen to be in. One night, Laura gets a rude awakening when she finds out her sister is pregnant; a woman who less than a year ago was crushing pills in her kitchen mortar and pestle and dancing naked on bar tops, and the novel Laura’s been hopelessly plugging away at has now entered it’s tenth year of non-progression. When she meets straight-laced pianist Jim (Fra Fee, ‘Les Misérables’) at a bar one evening, the pair quickly fall in love and become engaged, much to Tyler’s chagrin, and thus begins the existential tug-of-war between her life with her best friend and that with her new love, and the newfound temptation of local literary Marty (Dermot Murphy, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’). All the while, she’s trying to find inspiration and motivation to finally attack her book and earn the title of writer.