The dependably wayward Mark Cousins offers perhaps his most eccentric docu-essay yet, an impressionistic portrait of his home town, with Helena Bereen playing a regal personification of the spirit of place. Cousins teams up with star cameraman Christopher Doyle, the two of them finding subtly coloured beauty in otherwise unpromising urban austerity. The film is least convincing when making overt polemical points, as in its enactment of the funeral of the Last Bigot. Its winning moments come when its poetic revelations speak simply through the visuals, or when we meet characters like the joyously foul-mouthed drinking partners Rosie and Maud. It’s a film that would seem unfocused coming from anyone else – only Cousins would devote a long closing stretch to the story of a woman who left her shopping at a bus stop. But then, only he would have set this episode to a late 60s number by local deity Van Morrison, giving it a peculiar nobility.
