“Handsome Devil" at the Figge Art Museum -- June 5.
Thursday, June 5, 6:30 p.m.
Figge Art Museum, 225 West Second Street, Davenport IA
A charming coming-of-age dramedy also designed to expose hypocrisy and snobbery in the Irish private-school system, writer/director John Butler's 2016 release Handsome Devil enjoys a June 5 screening at Davenport's Figge Art Museum, this presentation in the Free Film at the Figge series held in celebration of Gay Pride Month, and lauded by Filmink as "a warm blanket of a film that manages to tackle sexuality and homophobia with a surprisingly light, but not ineffectual, tone."
In Handsome Devil, Ned Roche (Fionn O'Shea) is an ostracised student at the fictional Wood Hill College – an elite, rugby-obsessed, all-boys boarding school in Ireland. Ned seems to be the only student at the school who does not enjoy rugby, and when new student Conor Masters (Nicholas Galitzine) arrives at Wood Hill, this star rugby player is assigned to be Ned's roommate. Although initially wary of each other, Ned and Conor soon form a close friendship based on a shared interest in music. But when new English teacher Mr. Sherry (Andrew Scott) also arrives at the school and is soon discovered to have a male partner, Ned and Conor are challenged to find their own voices, and the boys' friendship is tested by the rugby-obsessed expectations of others after one of the pair is found to be gay.
Butler's film, which is inspired by the writer/director's own experiences attending Blackrock College in the 1980s, premiered in the Contemporary World Cinema section of the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival and was released in Ireland in the spring of 2017. The film received critical acclaim, winning the award for Best Irish Feature of 2017 from the Dublin Film Critics' Circle. It also earned four nominations at the 2018 Irish Film and Television Academy (IFTA) Awards, including Best Feature Film, as well as the Best Single Drama Award at the annual Celtic Media Festival in 2018. On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the dramatic comedy holds an approval rating of 84 percent, with the Web site's critics consensus reading "Handsome Devil offers a charming, well-acted variation on the coming-of-age story with a few fresh topical twists." New Zealand's The Post, meanwhile, called Butler's movie "a charming and charismatic coming-of-age story that's part Dead Poets Society, part Sing Street."
Handsome Devil will be screened in the Davenport venue's John Deere Auditorium on June 5, admission the 6:30 p.m. screening is free, and guests are invited to socialize and discuss the film afterward with a complimentary glass of wine underwritten by Barb Zimmerman. For more information, call (563)326-7804 and visit FiggeArtMuseum.org.
