Audiences loved Red Roses and Petrol in Boston, where World Wide Motion Pictures Corporation was pleased to have the film showcased in the area’s top theater: the AMC Loews Harvard Square, last week. As it did in New York, Los Angeles and Orange County, CA, the picture again received a high audience rating. Advertising was run in three local papers, but it was The Boston Globe that returned with our favorite review to date (see below).
“Petrol” Is A Mordantly Funny Affair
By Michael Hardy
Globe CorrespondentWhen a movie’s main character dies before the opening credits, you begin to suspect the filmmakers of morbidity. When the first song turns out to be Flogging Molly’s “The Worst Day Since Yesterday,” you might be tempted to head for the exits.
But stay put: As Samuel Beckett wisely noted, “Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.” And although it never achieves the bleak hilarity of “Endgame,” “Red Roses and Petrol,” an adaptation of Irish writer Joseph O’Connor’s play, boasts its share of Beckettian moments — I’m thinking especially of the point when one of the characters snorts two lines of his father’s ashes, mistaking them for cocaine.
Those ashes are the remnants of Enda (Malcolm McDowell), the craggy, domineering paterfamilias of the Doyle clan. A heart attack fells Enda in the first scene of the film, but he lingers on through his video diary, which the Doyles watch during his wake. In the Irish ballad “Finnegan’s Wake,” the rowdy mourners bring the departed back to life with their festivities. In “Petrol,“ on the other hand, there are no festivities at all, and the family’s greatest concern seems to be making sure that Enda stays good and dead.
Enda, you see, is not exactly in line for beatification. A tyrannical father and an unfaithful husband, he bequeaths to his family a lifetime’s worth of grievances. Perhaps the most aggrieved is Enda’s son Johnny (Max Beesley), a whiskey-sodden ne’er-do-well collapsing under the weight of unfulfilled expectations. Enda’s two daughters struggle with their own problems: Medbh is planning to elope to Australia, and Catherine is introducing her fiancé to the family for the first time. And Enda’s wife, Moya, suffers for the sins of everyone, assuming the Sisyphean responsibility of maintaining family unity.
Because “Petrol” is so grim, its few moments of repentance and reconciliation don’t feel as contrived as they might otherwise; if any film has earned the right to be sentimental, it’s this one. The darkness is also broken by Beesley’s inflammable performance, which recalls McDowell’s own star-making turn in “A Clockwork Orange.” “Petrol,” it’s true, follows in the footsteps of earlier, better plays by Eugene O’Neill and Harold Pinter. But between its extraordinary performances and some of the most inventive cursing I’ve ever heard (all in a creamy Irish brogue), this film, like adaptations of “The Homecoming” and “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” before it, deserves its own place in the sun.
Now that the rollout of Red Roses and Petrol has begun, we’re eager to hear what the viewing public thinks! Did you catch a recent screening in Los Angeles or New York? Please take a moment to share your opinion on the new “reviews and comments” section of the movie’s official forum. What made you laugh? Did anything surprise you or make you cry? Did you want to get up and dance? We can’t wait to hear your thoughts!
Some of the critics may have lost their sense of humor, but theatergoers had a deeper appreciation for the wickedly funny-yet-poignant family dynamics presented in Red Roses and Petrol. In fact, the film was such a hit with viewers that it received a high Q rating, an indicator that it will find continued success as it opens in additional U.S. cities. If you caught one of the opening week screenings, World Wide Motion Pictures Corporation invites you to visit the official Red Roses and Petrol forum and share your own impressions.