Spilt Milk

Eleven-year-old Bobby (Cillian Sullivan) may be living on a housing estate in Dublin, in 1984, but he’s got big dreams of following in the footsteps of his telly hero Kojak and becoming a master detective. First of all, he aims to save up for the fedora, and in order to do that, he takes on crimes around the neighbourhood, locating lost property for pennies with his not-always-willing best pal and sidekick Nell (Naoise Kelly). “You’ve always got a plan. You always get in trouble.” she points out as she negotiates a rate to join him on his latest escapade.

What starts off as child’s play in Brian Durin’s atmospheric debut, scripted by Cara Loftus, soon becomes considerably darker, after the family telly goes AWoL shortly followed by Bobby’s older brother Oisin (Lewis Brophy). Things in Bobby’s small household between mum Maura (Danielle Galligan), dad John (Laurence O’Fuarain) and his gran (Pom Boyd) also seem strained, with dad’s fuse even shorter than usual after an incident at work.

Bobby sees a universe of clues that could lead him to his beloved older brother but as the mystery behind Oisin’s disappearance gradually comes into focus adult viewers will be able to see the world of trouble that also awaits youngsters who are unaware of the drug addiction epidemic that is sweeping through their neighbourhood.

When it comes to creating the 1980s microcosm Bobby and Nell inhabit, the production design from Shane McEnroe is tactile, right from the credits that reveal an intricate set of notebooks in which Bobby has jotted down his clues. There isn’t an ornament that feels out of place and you can almost smell the kitchen chip fat and butterfly bun icing as you gaze around Bobby’s home, with its orange pine and associated shades of brown.

The subject matter and the child’s eye viewpoint proves a difficult needle to thread. The sweetly worked partnership between Nell and Bobby - which announces both youngsters as impressive talents - could have been plucked from a family film, and there are coming-of-age elements that succeed. The trouble comes as the film’s themes darken and the film becomes torn between maintaining an element of its sunnier side and going to the places that Oisin’s trajectory is taking. The end result demands an audience substantially older than Spilt Milk’s protagonists, while simultaneously feeling as though Loftus and Durin are holding back from a more complex exploration of the addiction theme. It may struggle to keep its balance but Durin and Loftus deserve praise for even tackling such a tricky tightrope in the first place.