Review of ‘Room Taken’: This home is truly where the heart is
A homeless man desperately hopes he can move into an elderly woman’s house.
Review of ‘Room Taken’: This home is truly where the heart is
Cast: Brid Brennan, Gabriel Adewusi, Amy Conroy, Wale Adebusuyi, Brody Abbey, Helen Norton, Jeff O’Toole
Critic’s Rating: 4 Stars out of 5
Director: Tj O’Grady Peyton
Duration: 18 minutes
Genre: Drama
Language: English, Yoruba
Release: 2023
What’s it about?
A homeless man desperately hopes he can move into an elderly woman’s house.
Review:
No matter how old or poor we are, or the stark difference in our ethnicity or cultural background, we always have something to offer each other. That’s the premise of this moving human drama. Even for a short film, Room Taken boasts of both substance and subtlety. It also speaks of the loss of a loved one and how an unlikely person in unusual circumstances can fill that void. Plus, it has something to say for faith in the spiritual universe.
Moreover, this film is an ode to the African immigrant struggling to make a home in Ireland – a country that is not particularly welcoming to his kind. Isaac (Gabriel Adewusi), a bilingual Yoruba and English speaker, presumably from Nigeria, is faced with just such a predicament. Amid the cold of his host country – both weather-wise and personal – he has to find a new bed to sleep in almost every night. Even vacancies at local shelters are hard to come by, often turning him into a side-walk dweller.
Hope arises courtesy a strange turn of events. Isaac stumbles into the domicile of a visually-impaired senior citizen named Vicky (Brid Brennan). He takes advantage of the lady’s blindness to move into her spacious house. Tiptoeing surreptitiously around her, Isaac experiences for the first time what is like to enjoy the warmth and comforts of a home. But will Vicky eventually run into him? Or surely one of his “host’s” visitors is likely to blow his cover.
Furthermore, is Vicky completely oblivious to the presence in the house? And is Isaac the kind to take full advantage of the situation? Debutante short-film writer Michael Whalen uses minimal dialogue to covey a story of humanity, symbiosis and integration. Meanwhile, the narrative is masterfully converted to screen by Tj O’Grady Peyton, whose evident craft belies the fact that he has just one previous short (Wave) to his credit.
There is a fair amount of interplay between suspense and drama, which is complemented by the “interaction” between Brennan and Adewusi. The narrative is enriched by effective camera-work and music, which avoid drawing too much attention to them. Room Taken’s unexpected and wonderful conclusion is open to debate and conjecture, while the question that is sure to linger in the viewer’s mind is - does it take the blind to truly recognise the human spirit?
