Completed in the same spare style as ADAM & PAUL, the second collaboration between between director Lenny Abrahamson and writer Mark O’Halloran is an assured work that withstands comparison to the Dardenne brothers. At times unbearably poignant, GARAGE weaves tragedy with comedy to tell a beautifully drawn tale from the margins of contemporary rural Irish life. Regarded by his neighbours as a harmless misfit, Josie (Shortt) has spent all his adult life as the caretaker of a crumbling rural petrol. Over the course of summer Josie’s world suffers a shift when a shy teenager, David (Ryan), comes to work with him. Initially performing their menial tasks in silence, they tentatively open up and suddenly Josie is drinking cans down at the railway tracks with the local kids. This awakens dormant needs, leading to Josie’s akward tilt at intimacy with local shop girl Carmel (Duff). The relationship with David is ultimately undone following a thoughtless moment and from there events spiral from Josie’s faltering grasp. Tender thougn never sentimental, the film’s numerous atributes include a taut script, naturalistic photography and Shortt’s simply astonishing lead performance.
Friends since they were small boys, Adam and Paul have withered into two hapless desperate junkies, tied together by habit and necessity. The course of a day, which is like every other, is entirely devoted to the business of scrounging and robbing money for drugs.