Aoife Spratt Shines in Trampoline (2014), An Immensely Likeable Irish Indie
This is the script for Ep. 2 of Whose House? Art House!, a short podcast on modern indie movies. Listen on Soundcloud.
Tipperary-born film-maker Tom Ryan made headlines in the Irish press last year with his indie romance Twice Shy, a gentle feature thrust onto the cultural radar by its story umbrella story of young ex-lovers driving to the airport for an abortion flight to England, a grim pilgrimage soon to be rendered historical relic thanks to Ireland’s recent act of self liberation. But before that was Ryan’s first film, 2014’s Trampoline, one of the most likeable Irish indies of the last few years and available now to watch on Amazon Prime.
Trampoline has a looser hook than Twice Shy, but shares its interest in the constrictions of small-town existence, the confusion of your twenties and the difficulties Irish families have communicating with eachother. It also out-manoeuvres its limited budget better, showing flashes of vibrancy and warmth in Cian Moynan’s photography, and lifted by a vulnerable, entrancing lead performance from Aoife Spratt as Angie, a native of Nenagh, Tipperary’s second largest town, who returns home for a temporary teaching contract in the local secondary school.
Trampoline’s emotionally authentic exploration of being young and adrift in Ireland is keyed in by an undisguised sense of place. Ryan, who had experience as a cameraman before expanding to writer/director, shot in his home town to save costs, and used the support and goodwill of small Nenagh businesses to finance the production, promising a mention in the credits and a shopfront shot in return. The product placement isn’t actually that noticeable and helps locate the story in local geography: the park where you go because there’s nothing else to go, the furniture store where Angie’s best friend works, the high street bar where an ex-classmate and potential love interest pulls pints.
Angie is returning home from London to cover maternity leave teaching English at St. Josephs, following in her retired mother’s example by trying to get unco-operative teenagers interested in The Great Gatsby. She moves into her old bedroom, sharing the house with a younger brother, sister and their Mum. The father, who ran off with another woman, is referred to in oblique terms over the dinner table, a sore spot for Angie, who has cut him out, and a source of tension wit sister Rose, who maintains a casual relationship with him.
Angie has an upbeat listnessness immediately familiar to any uni graduate unsure what it is they’re supposed to be doing with their life, bouncing back to the family home away from city hubs. It’s a situation particularly appropriate for young Irish people, whose economic fortunes, over the past decade, have been hammered with the never-ending fallout of the Celtic Tiger’s implosion. Angie has bounced around in London from one part-time gig to another, and here dismisses the teaching role as ‘just a job’ to a more invested colleague. Her real interest is in music, but the vocation has been tainted by the indisgressions of her musician father, and she buries.
Trampoline’s title suggests bouyant movement, but Angie’s experience is one of being ‘stuck’. Stuck in terms of place and career, sure, but these are side-symptoms of an emotional constipation, the grudge against her father and an affected lilt of unseriousness, both of get unpacked and reframed as the film goes on. Spratt plays Angie with immense Cheshire cat likeability, eager, deferential, unsure of herself, growing increasingly frayed under hometown realities and forced to confront a some necessary and uncomfortable truths about herself and the relative unimportance of her pain.
Under Brady’s direction and Moynan’s relaxed shooting style, Spratt and the rest of cast are given space to breathe, and the truth of the relationships to family and friends come through. In low-budget writer-director debuts, emotional scenes can sometimes feel nervous and brittle, and therefore unconvincing, but Brady knows when to give Spratt room to react and process. He lucked out with his lead, who’s perfect for a high-quality romantic comedy, and brings vulnerability and humour to Angie, a wounded wanderer who needs to go through some shit before she can bounce back.
