Rory O'shea Was Here

Irish filmmaker Damien O'Donnell's offbeat coming-of-age movie opens in Carrigmore, "a special home for special people" — institution-speak for a tidy, well-maintained facility that allows the able-bodied to feel pretty good about abandoning their disabled relatives to its beige-on-beige confines. That's sweet-natured Michael Connolly's (Steven Robertson) story: Now in his early twenties, Michael, who has cerebral palsy, was abandoned to institutional care by his father, a famous jurist (Gerard McSorley) unable to deal with his son's muscle spasms and impeded speech. People assume he's slow-witted because they can't understand him, but Michael is intelligent, fr...