Neil Jordan gives us another gender bending gem that plays something like “Velvet Goldmine” with guns and explosions.
Cillian Murphy plays Patrick “Kitten” Brady who, as a kid, has always realized that he just wants to be a woman. Well, that and find his mother who abandoned him as a baby on a priest’s doorstep. Raised by the priest (Liam Neeeson), Patrick finally reaches an age that he’s able to strike out on his own, so he puts on a dress and makeup and leaves his home in Ireland to find his mother, the Phantom Lady, who’s supposed to be living in London. And so begins Patrick’s journey through this cold, bitter world that’s instantly transformed into a kind of happy-go-lucky wonderland, it is London in the 70s after all, as we see it through his naïve eyes, despite whatever doom and gloom comes his way. As Patrick wanders from random situation to random situation – working as eye candy at a peep show, becoming a magician’s assistant, finding himself blamed for an IRA bombing of a disco – he narrates his adventures as if he were telling a fairy tale and the film holds onto that kind of magical quality.
“Breakfast on Pluto” is chock full of glossy 70s glam and Cillian Murphy is amazing as the transvestite adventurer, never once letting up his female act, making us forget about the zombie fighting Cillian Murphy we’ve all know and loved for the past few years. If you like your boys pretty and your stories incredible, this movie is for you.
