Handsome Devil

John Butler's Handsome Devil came out in 2016 and is one of the most charming Irish coming-of-age comedies of recent years. Following The Stag, it confirmed Butler as a director of warm character comedy with a social conscience running underneath. Andrew Scott, in a central supporting role, gives the film the kind of gravity his later turn in Fleabag would make famous.

At a rural Irish boarding school obsessed with rugby, Ned (Fionn O'Shea), a bullied misfit who would rather sing folk songs than play sport, is made to share a dormitory with the new term's star fly-half, Conor (Nicholas Galitzine), a transfer from another school whose life is more complicated than his rugby reputation suggests. Slowly and warily the two boys become friends, helped in different ways by Ned's English literature teacher, Mr Sherry (Andrew Scott).

On the surface it is broad sentimental comedy, but underneath runs a sharper current about the pressure on adolescent boys to conform, and about the particular masculine expectations of Irish rugby culture. Cathal Watters photographs the Co. Wicklow school grounds, the soundtrack leans on Irish folk, and the whole film commits to a warmth that is rarer than it should be. It is also more emotionally exact than most recent Irish cinema.