Breakfast on Pluto

Unwavering optimism and an unfailing sense of self are all you really need to get by. That is, it's enough for Patrick Braden (Cillian Murphy), or Kitten as she'd prefer you call her. His story, an odd road traveled in search of the mother that left him as an infant and sprinkled with one strange encounter after another, is draped over 1960s and '70s Ireland and London. All the visuals that are conjured in such a setting are present, from bell-bottoms and big hair to IRA marches and bombings. Kitten tells his own story, breaking it into cleverly titled chapters that fluidly move us from otherwise random incident to incident.

While he's still in school, Patrick's identity reveals itself, first when his conservative foster mother finds him wearing her daughter's dress and further when he convinces the headmaster to let him take the Irish equivalent of Home Ec to keep him out of trouble. Kitten smiles with girlish glee while affixing sequins and embroidered patches to his uniform sweater. These colorful, expressly unique, sometimes heartbreaking and dangerious events are the backbone of the journey. As a teenager, yearning for the parental love he was denied and searching for a group to belong to, he leaves for London in search of his mother, his only clue in that she looks like screen siren Mitzi Gaynor. Hitching a ride with a band on tour, Kitten and lead singer Billy Hatchet (Gavin Friday) fall in love, leading to a singing stint for Kitten and sidways glances from the rest of the band. Hatchet, storing arms for the IRA, puts Kitten in a few sticky situations; the stickiest, though, Kitten puts herself in. When she dumps the guns in a nearby lake, she almost gets herself killed.

Homeless and penniless in London, a chance encounter in a cafe leads to another showbiz gig, this time as magician Bertie's (Stephen Rea) assistant. In the midst of getting cut in half and being the target of thrown daggers, childhood friend Charlie (Ruth Negga) reappears in Kitten's life, pregnant and alone. By now Kitten is living daily as a woman and though there's a short scene where she finally tells Bertie, whom she fears is falling for her, what she really is, director Neil Jordan treats it masterfully. Bertie admits he's known all along and that's the end of it; there's still love, still friendship, still acceptance.

The chain of encounters is solidly present by the time Kitten happens to be at a nightclub when it's bombed. From the outside, Kitten's a woman; when the paramedics discover the truth, he somehow becomes the suspect in the bombing. The week-long interrogation that follows is one of those heartbreaking scenes to watch. First because the abusive detectives don't believe his innocence and then because Kitten, in his deep desire to be loved, must be dragged from the station, all the while offering to live in one of the cells and keep house for the detectives.

There are obviously more incidents than these; too many to recount in a simple review. At some point the message is received and the events in Kitten's unpredictable life become redundant, but that moment came late for me. Up until then, and even after, the sentiment in Kitten's simultaneous risky behavior and complete certainty in his decisions is to be admired. There's no mental war he's fighting with himself; he's as sure of who he is as it is hard to walk in the platforms he prefers. His certainty and optimism (Kitten questions the merit in being serious several times) is misunderstood by those in his world, leading to hurtful words and going so far as to incite violence. Jordan does well to remind us that their actions are out of confusion and an inability to express themselves otherwise rather than of hate and intolerance. It's as if we're to wonder what the world would be like if everyone could be as open about themselves as Kitten.

Murphy slides easily into Kitten, allowing her (or his; I've been struggling with that all along) to wholly consume his (Murphy's, that is) every mannerism and movement. He even manages to put a certain twinkle in his eye, as if reflecting all the good Kitten manages to see in the world through the rubble and desctruction she's constantly surrounded by. Liam Neeson, often guilty of turning in rather vanilla performances, plays Father Bernard, a compassionate priest (who happens to be Kitten's father) torn between his passions and his duties, surprisingly well. When the movie finally gets near resolution (Kitten and Charlie are back in Ireland, living with Father Bernard), Neeson finally gets emotional, revealing his true identity to Kitten.

Uniquely laid out, Breakfast on Pluto is a choppy, lengthy series of encounters and events that could have easily been bland and transparent given a different treatment. Instead, Jordan and his cast deliver a multi-layered, ultimately universal story of optimism, light-heartedness and acceptance.