"Well, fuck me pink with a hairy arse!"
A boy is born in conservative 1940s Ireland to a Priest (Liam Neeson) and an unknown
woman who flees to London
after the birth. Bought up by a strict Catholic foster mother he shows signs of
difference at an early age when he is caught in a dress and heels. By the 1970s
the teenage Patrick ‘Kitten’ Braden (Cillian Murphy) is a proud and open cross
dresser, still living in the small, conservative Irish town. As he gets older
he wonders about his mother and discovers that she fled to England . He
decides to try to find her and along the way joins a glam rock band, has
brushes with the IRA, turns to prostitution and comes close to death on a
number of occasions.
The entire film is set against the backdrop of the ‘troubles’
in Ireland
during the 1970s. Kitten comes face to face with both sides of the war on a
number of occasions and the conflict forms a major stand throughout the story.
Another stand is her struggle to fit in with a world that tends to reject her
choice of lifestyle and her difficulty with everyone taking life so seriously.
The film is cut up into thirty or so chapters. Each is numbered and titled but
the plot flows smoothly throughout. This mostly worked well to set up a scene
but did become a little tiresome after a while.