Cockeyed Optimism
Breakout star Cillian Murphy and director Neil Jordan make 'Pluto' a breakfast of champions

You could call him a cockeyed optimist, and Patrick "Kitten" Braden would appreciate the irony. In fact, you could pay no higher compliment to the protagonist of Breakfast On Pluto, Neil Jordan's spirited, offbeat Irish fairy tale. An abandoned infant of dubious parentage left on the church steps and fostered out to an indifferent barmaid at the end of the uptight '50s, Patrick's only maternal role model is movie musical star Mitzi Gaynor.

Told that his runaway mum, former housekeeper for parish priest Father Bernard (Liam Neeson) resembled the movie star, Patrick spends his formative years embroidering the tale of his glamorous parent, while establishing his own identity as a dreamy youth who likes to dress in his foster sister's clothes and scandalize the priests at school with his provocative questions and stories. Jordan's film, adapted from the Patrick McCabe novel, could be the flipside of Brokeback Mountain; unspooling in a similar time period, Pluto champions knowing who you are and embracing it, no matter what.

Little Patrick happily surrenders to his inner Kitten, but he's no Pollyanna. Growing up in a small Irish town near the border of war-torn Northern Ireland, his youth is riddled with IRA bombs, paramilitary riots, and prejudice. (His best mates include a boy with Downs syndrome and a girl of color.) Coming of age in the early '70s (and blossoming into superb actor Cillian Murphy, whose beauty transcends gender), and hitting the road for London in search of his mother, Patrick is brutalized by both IRA terrorists and British cops, and threatened by a silky serial killer (a droll, skanky cameo by '70s idol Bryan Ferry). But Patrick's optimism and sense of himself are never extinguished.

And his determination to live life on his own terms leads to some engaging epihanies: a badass biker gang turns out to be metaphysical, spliff-smoking philosophers. A tough metal band front man (Gavin Friday) is the first of many beaus who fall for Patrick and further his picaresque adventures. (Another is Jordan stalwart Stephen Rea, as a third-rate, yet plucky London magician.) The hardcore cop who mistook him for a terrorist so worries about Patrick, he gets him a job in a "safe and legal" peep show to get him off the dangerous streets—which leads to a wonderful reverse-confessional when one of his "peepers" one day is Father Bernard, who finally acknowledges the truth about Patrick's origins.

While the story and the times it depicts are indeed "serious, serious, serious" (which becomes Patrick's mantra of impatience), Jordan's filmmaking is downright larky in its cheeky high spirits, from a Greek chorus of CGI robins, whose subtitled observations include quotes from Oscar Wilde, to an extremely canny selection of '60s and '70s pop songs to embellish Patrick's adventures. (Patrick outrages his school priest with a question about sex-change operations while Nilsson's "Me And My Arrow" floats along on the soundtrack.)

But none of it would work without an actor of Murphy's grit, aplomb, and finesse in the central role. He may be stuck like a dope on a thing called hope, and he can't get it out of his heart, but his Patrick is heroic in his self-awareness, calmly excoriating wit, and good humor.

BREAKFAST ON PLUTO With Cillian Murphy, Liam Neeson, and Stephen Rea. Written by Patick McCabe and Neil Jordan. Directed by Neil Jordan. A Sony Classics release. Rated R. 129 minutes. (***1/2)
Review published in Good Times, Jan. 12, 2006