The Thousands

This Irish film is a subtle, beguiling mix of romance, literary satire and horror. Michael Farr (Ciaran Hinds) is a recently widowed father of two and high-school woodwork teacher in the small town of Cobh. Volunteering at the local literary festival, he’s drawn to author Lena Morelle (Iben Hjejle), whose spooky The Eclipse echoes the creepy apparitions that have begun to trouble Michael.

Michael must also compete for Lena’s affections with self-important blockbuster novelist Nicholas Holden (Aidan Quinn, channelling Russell Crowe), who finds the festival impossibly provincial but is still happy to have his ego stroked by its mostly-retiree audience. Nicholas hooked up with Lena at a past festival and now he’s keen for round two.

Hinds has a weary dignity that instantly put me on Michael’s side, and even Quinn adds humanity to a character who could’ve been a cliché. The supernatural elements are genuinely scary – especially to a wussbag like me – but, oddly, they don’t seem out of place. This is a film about worlds touching, awkwardly, like a first kiss – the literary and the quotidian, the unhappy present and the hopeful future… even the living and the dead.