Toronto film festival: adapted by Max Porter from his novella Shy and co-starring Little Simz, Emily Watson and Tracey Ullman this brutal but ultimately hopeful story is fiercely affecting
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roducer-star Cillian Murphy and director Tim Mielants last collaborated on a superlative adaptation of Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These, and their new project together could hardly be more different: a drama suffused with gonzo energy and the death-metal chaos of emotional pain, cut with slashes of bizarre black humour. Max Porter has adapted his own 2023 novella Shy for the screen and Murphy himself gives one of his most uninhibited and demonstrative performances.
Murphy is Steve, a stressed, troubled but passionately committed headteacher with a secret alcohol and substance abuse problem, in charge of a residential reform school for delinquent teenage boys some time in the mid-90s. With his staff – deputy (Tracey Ullman), therapist-counsellor (Emily Watson) and a new teacher (Little Simz) – he has to somehow keep order in the permanent bedlam of fights and maybe even teach them something.
The boys themselves are an intimidating mix of energy and brutally aggressive wit, engaged in a permanent rap battle, but without the rap and with actual violence. The quietest and smartest is Shy (Jay Lycurgo), and the change of title from book to film is an interesting shift in emphasis, or conceivably a more pointed way of bringing teacher and pupil into closer parallel.
