Handsome Devil

A film set in an Irish boarding school and built on its rugby culture. Ned is the boy the school excludes. He does not play rugby, does not make the team, and because the school's entire value system runs on rugby he is a permanent target. A new student is put in his room: Conor, the team's expected star. Their becoming friends runs against the school's order, and as the friendship goes on everyone grows uncomfortable. The third figure is Sherry, the new English teacher. He asks his students not to write in anyone else's voice, and the film's whole argument turns around that sentence: using your own voice is something that costs you at this school. Andrew Scott plays the teacher. Fionn O'Shea plays Ned and Nicholas Galitzine plays Conor. John Butler directed. A warm and honest example for anyone who likes school films and Irish cinema about adolescence. For a viewer expecting something harder, the film softens its conflicts and eases its resolutions; unsettling you was never its aim.