A different kind of kitten purrs in 'Breakfast on Pluto'
A kitten. Let that innocent and adorable image rub against your leg.
Just because Cillian Murphy plays a man named Kitten in "Breakfast on Pluto," don't shrink from that image. This film is even more peculiar than its title, but if you will allow it, this film is as unthreatening and irresistible as a kitten.
Kitten knew he was different when he was a boy. Left on a church stoop when he was a baby, this Irish lad grows to find his way through some combination of not having a clue and knowing that he is who he is. He does not want much, although he travels far from his familiar world to find his mother. Along the way, he intersects with a series of characters that fill this bizarre bazaar of rich storytelling.
Insufficient summary phrases aside, this is not a story about Kitten's sexual orientation. It's a story about a waif. Maybe waifs faded from the scene after the 19th century of Charles Dickens. Surely the world is still filled with disconnected souls in need of a home. Kitten is a waif in modern Ireland and London, England.
Cillian Murphy's face fills the big screen in the appealing way that young female beauties have been studied by the camera throughout cinema history. Be attracted by whatever emotions you will allow yourself, but the glow of life in Kitten's spirit is worth the hardship and peculiarities that "Breakfast on Pluto" puts you through.
Director Neil Jordan has made a more fanciful tale this time than his gender-bending "Crying Game" (1992). Jordan's modern backdrop of violent Irish revolution again colors the emotional scenery, but less so on Pluto, where the colors also refract through a a magician and a rock band, a minimum-wage fairy tale technician and a peep show establishment.
Go to the Nevada Theatre, Sunday at 7:30 p.m. for a nourishing breakfast, even if it is on Pluto.