Orphans

Glasgow. Their mother has died and four siblings come together on the eve of the funeral. Thomas wants to sit with the coffin all night, because that is how it is done. Michael is stabbed in a bar and tells nobody; he plans to pass the wound off as an industrial injury and claim compensation. John goes looking for a gun to shoot the man who stabbed his brother. Sheila, in a wheelchair, is left alone in the street. That night a storm comes down on the city, the roof comes off the church, and all four reach the funeral by separate roads. Peter Mullan directs the Scottish film; a hundred and one minutes, with Douglas Henshall, Gary Lewis, Stephen McCole and Rosemarie Stevenson in the cast. It was Mullan's first feature; he was known as an actor. It runs across a single night and sets comedy and violence beside each other without separating them.