Bloom (18)
Running time: 113min ***

Adapting James Joyce's wordy brain-boiler Ulysses into a movie was never going to be easy, but in Bloom, Irish director Sean Walsh has succeeded through inspired casting and imaginative production values.

We follow a day in the life of Leopold Bloom (Stephen Rea) and his wife Molly (Angeline Ball), a couple whose musings swoop from birth to death and all manner of life in between.

Rea descends to new levels of gloominess as the man trying to come to terms with the death of his mother, while Ball's sensual portrayal of Molly puts the sex in the 1904 city. Bloom's soliloquies and confusing structure might drive mainstream movie fans crazy, but those people are hardly Walsh's target audience. Still, you have to wonder who is.
Pavel Barter.