Masking a near unbearable want for a sense of self, Colm (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor) struggles with his place at work and at home, his job on a Dublin dock minimizing his potential and his wife and children leaving him vacant. In a men’s room, he arranges for a young man half his age to meet him, Jay (Tom Glynn-Carney) a rough street urchin who hustles him for money before Colm can even decide why he’s gone this far. Soon enough, Jay is blackmailing Colm but their arrangement becomes more than cash between them when the emotional support they each provide offers genuine sanctuary and terrible danger.
Written by Mark O’Halloran (based on his stage play) and directed by Peter Mackie Burns, Rialto is a lowkey character drama centered on a hollow man in his forties whose father has recently passed and begins a sort of reawakening, both mentally and sexually. He finds comfort for each in the company of Jay, a kid not yet twenty, who himself has a rough life but sees a connection in the broken older man. What this leads to is an interesting relationship of learning, laced with regret and understanding and a few earnest surprises.
Rialto isn’t about the sex as it might lead you to believe but rather the intimacy and complications of companionship that builds in the peripheral of a real life left in question. Colm has a faithful wife (Monica Dolan) and two grown children, all of whom begin to suspect there is something off in their husband and father. The film doesn’t abandon or simplify this, allowing it to remain the honest consequences of Colm’s unraveling as his wife must face a reality that no wife (or children for that matter) should. There is real heartbreak in how that evolves.
Burns takes his time in unwrapping Colm, the symbolic positioning of stacks of container crates at his job towering over him as he lumbers along in his unfulfilling job prefacing the start of a painful journey. Colm is himself never positioned as the hero in all this or one that somehow deserves what he’s after but instead a man simply pinned in the corners of an existence shaped by his own making. It’s not celebratory of any of it, the experience always heavy and grey with a collection of impressive performances that give it authenticity.
That begins with Vaughan-Lawlor, who plays this shattered figure with a sort of visible pressure on his spine, as though he is not only incapable of righting his path but somehow lacking any control to do so. He’s matched by a sturdy and stoic turn from Glynn-Carney, who establishes himself as a young talent worth keeping an eye out for, this dark and emotive performance one that lingers.
While Rialto is not a broad audience standout and is absent of the kind of grandstand emotional set pieces the genre is known for, it is a deeply thorough theatrical experience for fans of the craft. This is a movie about people and keeps a truth about it that many will assuredly feel some connection to.