At the end of 2005 as studios peddle their Oscar consideration product comes a Dickensian Irish fairy tale courtesy of director Niel Jordan and writer Patrick McCabe. The team who brought us the superb character study The Butcher Boy and like that film we get a fascinating view of a persons extraordinary journey through a tumultuous landscape with a uniquely Irish point of view. Here's how it goes.

It begins with narration by our main character. A delicate lad named Patrick Braden who has always preferred "Kitten." As an infant he was left on the doorstep of a parish priest Father Liam (Neeson) but is soon fobbed off on a stern foster mother - whose bitterness about the sudden imposition, is not helped when the boy takes to wearing his foster sisters lipstick and dresses. As a teenager he becomes the girl of a rockabilly singer named Billy Hatchet (Gavin Friday) and unknowinly gets mixed up with the IRA.

Patrick manages to wiggle out of this scrape by insisting he is simply "Kitten." an innocent transvestite prostitute and is set free. Only to nearly die at the hands of a predatory prostitute killer named Mr. Silky String (Bryan Ferry). But as is the pattern in Kitten's fortunes, things take a happy turn when she meets up and finds mutual respect in Mr. Bertie (Steven Rea), a small-time magician who saws Kitten in half as a part of the act. Also on the positive side of the ledger is a theme park transient (Brendan Gleeson) who is sharing and kind. Through all of this divine madness Kitten persists in her search for her long lost mother - while nurturing a suspicion that the parish priest Father Liam may well be her biological father as well.

The story here comes off as a brilliant, albeit long fairy tale with the hopeful and flighty Murphy composing a love letter to Ireland. A place she infuses with a kind of daft optimism - punctuated by talking birds and other fanciful creations that help her shrug off the weight of her tragi-comic hallucination of a world - all the while remaining true to him/her self.

The supporting cast (a band of Niel Jordan regulars) is more than apt for complementing Murphy's radiant performance in both sympathy and antagonism. Jordan has a preternatural knack for conveying the turbulant landscape of the UK at a time when America was troubled by Vietnam and a wide range of social upheaval. The episodic and fantasy elements definitley bring a sense of longing and hope in this film's theme of identity.

Niel Jordan has always been an articulate and detail oriented director (a great touch is the song from which the film's title originates) even from his early work. The comparisons to this film and Forrest Gump are only correct in the simple minded resolve of the main character and while I don't think the film will best Trans America come Oscar time, I'd like to see Cillian Murphy's performance recognized. Definitely another Niel Jordan triumph.