Although you may find its relentless misery a hardship at times, this is a well-crafted reconstruction of an impoverished Irish childhood in a town (Limerick) where it's always raining. Father (Robert Carlyle) is jobless, but the dole money keeps him in booze and fags, leaving nothing for his wife (Emily Watson) and a family that does little but raise the infant mortality rate. The story focuses on eldest son Frank to whom rags, filth and deprivation are just a normal way of life, but whose ambitions to get to America are fulfilled by a stroke of fortune at the end. Despite the depressing nature of this true memoir, the film never wallows in its own squalor, nor pities those who live in it. Carlyle and Watson, though not ideally cast, both come to inhabit their characters. And there are odd moments of high humour as when Frank, confessing 'dirty deeds' of a sexual nature, is taken aback when the priest asks him 'Was it wit' yourself, or another, or some class of beast? ' (DQ)