The Disappearance Of Finbar review

This English/Irish/Swedish co-production, based on an Irish novel and directed by British documentary-maker Sue Clayton, offers a strange blend of fairytale, road movie and musical.

The rambling narrative sees Finbar (Velvet Goldmine's Rhys Meyers) as a sullen teenager who mysteriously disappears from his Dublin housing estate. Several years later, his best friend Danny (Griffin) renews his efforts to track Finbar down. The trail leads him across Scandanavia, first to Stockholm and then to Lapland, where he stumbles upon the Finn Bar and a beautiful maiden by the name of Abbi.

The international road-trip brims with ideas about belonging, boundaries, roots, identity, communication and our desire to escape from the past, yet lacks cohesiveness, and although it comes to life in its second, snow-bound half, the situations throughout feel too contrived and derivative. The characters, meanwhile, are merely played as ciphers rather than true flesh-and-blood creations, leaving little for the audience to relate to.