Float Like a Butterfly review: 'A grim but lyrical film'

4 stars

Hazel Doupe in Float Like a Butterfly

Paul Whitington

A big hit at the Toronto Film Festival last year, Carmel Winters’ haunting drama is set in rural Cork in the early-1960s, and features an incredible central performance from Hazel Doupe.

She is Frances, a 17-year-old Traveller girl whose life is pretty tough.

Her mother died a few years back, and her rakish drunk of a father Michael (Dara Devaney) is more interested in fighting and carousing than parenting - “no flesh of mine is going to no school”, he boasts.

Michael reckons it’s time Frances got married and started making babies, but she’s obsessed with Muhammad Ali, and wants to become a boxer.

This is a grim but lyrical film, a stern rebuke to those who like to talk about the good old days.

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(15A, 101mins)