THE FIFTH PROVINCE
Director: Frank Stapleton
Feature film | IRL/D | 1997
92 min | Dolby SR
31st Hof International Film Festival
1997
Ireland. Emerald Isle. Enchanted home of leprechauns, fairies and Timothy Sugrue, romantic, aspiring writer and latter-day Norman Bates … Timmy’s days are spent looking after the hens and occasional guests at the remote and rain-sodden Innisfree B&B. In his free moments, he writes about the unbroken monotony of his existence. He’s regularly interrupted by the shrill voice of his mother upstairs as she recounts the more gruesome episodes in the lives of the Irish Saints or playfully launches the heavier household objects in the direction of her son’s head.
When his psychiatrist and spiritual advisor, Dr Drudy, counsels the young man to put his vivid imagination and telekinetic powers to positive use, Timmy brings forth a guardian angle in the form of Marcel Marcellino, a dashing Mexican movie star and World War II flying ace. With Marcel’s encouragement, Timmy enrols in a writer’s workshop, falls in love with his glamourous instructor and edits his mad mother out of the script …