Review: Breakfast on Pluto

By Kit Fluker

Thursday, February 16, 2006

After Patrick Braden’s stepmother comes home to find him wearing one of her dresses, she orders him to say, “I’m not a girl.” Young Patrick obeys, brimming with insincerity.

Breakfast on Pluto is not a story about a sexually confused young man. Patrick, who prefers to be called Kitten, knows exactly who she is, even if the people around her have trouble getting their heads around the idea.

Kitten grows up in Ireland in the ‘60s, but she has more important things on her mind than the violence encroaching on her hometown. Like many fairytale heroines before her, Kitten has a brutish stepmother and a resentful stepsister who do their best to make Kitten a drab drudge. Kitten leaves them behind and goes to London.

Terrible things happen in London, but both Kitten and the movie, refuse to go to pieces over these tragedies. Sections of the movie are labeled with tongue-in-cheek chapter headings, and even the direst situation may be played for humor.

As Kitten, Cillian Murphy (Red Eye) mumbles his way through the movie. He holds tightly to Kitten’s mask of superficiality, even when Kitten is at her lowest. It’s a risky choice on Murphy’s part, since I imagine some people will find it alienating. But Kitten’s ditzy veneer shouldn’t be taken for callousness.

Despite its tartness, Breakfast is a very sweet movie. Kitten meets real kindness in London. In fairy tales, lost children tend to be devoured, and some of the plot twists that save Kitten from that fate emulate Disney fiction.

Breakfast makes a few attempts at cynicism, but they’re not very pointed.

Liberty Hall

Rated: R, 135 minutes

FOUR STARS

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