EXCLUSIVE
Tom Vaughan-Lawlor (last seen
under mountains of CGI as Ebony
Maw in Avengers: Infinity War/Endgame)
stars as Colm, a dock worker whose
life is spiralling in more ways than
one. His abusive dad has just died,
Colm’s relationship with his teenage
son is similarly troubled, and his firm
is about to be bought out by a Dutch
conglomerate, putting the job he’s
had for 30 years at risk.
Like too many men, he’s
incapable of articulating his emotions
to those close to him, which is
where Jay (Dunkirk’s Tom Glynn-
Carney) – a twentysomething sexA
middle-aged man walks into a shopping-centre bathroom for a
rendezvous with a much younger male prostitute. It goes exactly
how movies tell you it’s supposed to go – things turn ugly.
A father with a well-paying middle-management job, he’s ripe
for blackmail. But what happens next is not the stuff of suffocating exploitation
movies. “The prostitute and the pimp setup has come out in lots of films,”
Peter Mackie Burns, the film’s director, tells Teasers. “But where the story
goes... it wasn’t something I’d seen before.”worker with frosted tips and a family
of his own to provide for – offers
unconventional solace.
“I thought it’d be really interesting
to examine the obvious problems
around masculinity and communication
and the toxic behaviour of certain
types of men,” explains Burns, whose
previous film Daphne was a similarly
astute character study. “These guys
make a very, very flawed safe space
to talk about their emotions. It’s
something neither of them
can do with their families.
It shows the real victims
of this type of toxicmasculinity are the women and the
families of the men.”
As on Daphne, Burns didn’t rehearse
with his leads, instead embarking on
weeks of “character research” with the
actors. “We read things. We discuss
things. We explore things. So by the
time we get onto the set, we know the
characters,” says Burns. “On smaller
movies, you want to be distinctive, and
to have something for the audience that
feels authentic. One of the luxuries of
making a low-budget movie is that you
can really spend time on characters.”
Penned by Mark O’Halloran, the
Irish screenwriter behind Lenny
Abrahamson’s 2004 feature Adam &
Paul, and based on his play Trade, the
film’s title refers to the South Dublin
suburb where Colm was raised. “‘Trade’
has a connotation with male hustling,
but I thought ‘Is that what the film
is about?’” recalls Burns. “It doesn’t
really cover the scope of the movie, so
we thought, ‘OK, where does he come
from, and can’t escape from? And
the writer lives there, of course,
so maybe he just looked out
the window!” JFETA | 8 MAY / RIALTO OPENS NEXT
MONTH AT TIME OF PRESS.Don’t Speak
RIALTO I Daphne director’s male romance is
something of an Irish Brokeback...
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GAMESRADARCOM/TOTALFILM APRIL 2020 | TOTAL FILM