Adam & Paul

Friends since they were small boys, Adam and Paul (we never learn which is which) have withered into two hapless, desperate Dublin junkies, tied together by habit and necessity. A stylized, downbeat comedy, the film follows the pair through a single day, which, like every other, is entirely devoted to the business of scrounging and robbing money for drugs.

The difference today is that Adam and Paul – already near rock bottom – have finally run out of luck, credit and friends. Stylistically, Adam & Paul is a cold, contemporary take on classic, physical comedy.

Thematically, it is a minimal fairytale about two baffled, vulnerable children in the grip of forces too powerful for them to handle; vulnerable, lost, sometimes pathetically optimistic, but always profoundly damaged. Adam & Paul is not a film without hope; it is a tender, unsentimental and very funny testament to the persistence of the human spirit in even the most damaged and marginal of people.