Life's a Breeze Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		4.0

Life's a Breeze Blu-ray Movie Review

Bring the Fabreze

Reviewed by Michael Reuben January 16, 2015

After a disappointing detour into an American-financed venture with The Good Doctor (2011), Irish writer/director Lance Daly has returned to the homegrown roots that brought him acclaim with Kisses (2008). Like that earlier film, Life's a Breeze is an Irish-Swedish co-production set in Dublin with a script written by Daly. Like so many Irish stories, it's a comedy because laughter is preferable to pain, anger and frustration, and a drama because many things that, at first, seem funny turn out to be deeply sad when you stop to think about them. Part of the story involves a teenagers coming-of-age, another concerns an elderly grandmother's taking stock of her life, and in the background Daly paints a compelling portrait of Ireland after the financial crisis. You have to wonder why so many American films now exceed two hours, when a craftsman like Daly can cover so much in just 83 minutes.

Magnolia Home Entertainment's Blu-ray arrives without any extras, but the film is so eloquent that it's hard to imagine what extras could add. Even Magnolia's usually detailed press notes are notably spare for this film. Typical of Daly's humor is the biographical sketch he submitted about himself. According to Daly, he "is very private (some would say paranoid) and unwilling to disclose any other biographical information. Anything currently available in the public domain is untrue."

"Life's a Breeze" is the brand name of an air freshener spread throughout the house of matriarch Annie Small by her children, who generally refer to her as "Nan" (venerable Irish actress Fionnula Flanagan from The Others and Four Brothers). As Nan approaches her eightieth birthday with the perpetual scowl of someone who has dragged herself through the tough life of raising five kids with little help from a hard-drinking husband, now deceased, Nan is a mystery to her eldest grandchild, thirteen-year-old Emma (Kelly Thornton). For Emma, it's a daily challenge dealing with the embarrassment of the makeshift lunches with which her mother, Margaret (Eva Birthistle), sends her to school: usually a banana and bread, while the other girls have neatly prepared sandwiches and, in many case, better hair, makeup and jewelry.

Still, Margaret appears to be the most successful of Nan's children. She's the one the others are always hitting up for money. ("I'll write you a check" is an oft-repeated line.) At the opposite end of the spectrum is Emma's Uncle Colm (Pat Shortt), who still lives in the house where he grew up and whose routine trips to collect unemployment benefits provide the film with both an opportunity for jokes and a sobering look at the long lines of those who can't find jobs since Ireland's economic recovery was toppled in 2008. They include two of Colm's siblings, whose first words when he sees them are, "Don't tell Nan!"

A disappointment to his mother, a constant butt of jokes to his siblings, Colm decides to impress Nan by spearheading a project to transform her home as an early birthday present. He enlists Emma to take her grandmother out for a day's excursion, and, when she returns, Colm and his sibilings have repaired, replaced, scrubbed, scoured and, most important, removed fifty years of accumulated debris and pack-rat accumulation. Nan's house looks beautiful, except . . . Something valuable went out with the trash, something her children didn't even know their mother had. As she relates the story to her shocked and incredulous family, they realize that they are now going to have to track down everything they just spent the day discarding and having hauled away.

The family's pursuit of Nan's treasure takes them through recycling stations, roadside dumps and eventually landfills located all over Ireland. Through these unlikely locales, director Daly slyly presents his commentary on Irish life in the second decade of the 21st Century. James Joyce famously compared his native land to an old sow that eats her farrow. In Daly's version, Ireland is an endless sea of discarded rubbish being scooped up and moved from place to place—and endlessly picked over on the off-chance that something valuable may appear. It's no accident when Daly works in a brief but elaborate subplot involving the possibility of a winning lottery ticket, because the lottery isn't much different. It just smells better.

As various family members abandon the expedition, either called away by other obligations or convinced that the pursuit is futile, Nan and Emma remain steadfast, to the consternation of Emma's mother. But Nan and her granddaughter seem to be growing closer, not necessarily knowing each other better, but liking each other more, a feeling reflected in Emma's growing willingness to wear the silly cap that Nan has knitted for her. They don't talk about anything in particular, or so it may seem in the gracefully understated performances by Thornton and Flanagan. Emma is intrigued by the notion of reincarnation, which Nan thinks is bunk, but then they begin riffing on the ideal way to come back—and only gradually do you begin to focus on the fact that Nan sometimes drifts far away, because she knows she'll be leaving soon, and the landfills they are visiting are a metaphor for all the material concerns she'll be glad to leave behind. (Meanwhile, Colm has quickly shifted from redoing his mother's home to planning for putting her into a home, because . . . well, ask yourself why when you see it.)

Life's a Breeze has a fairy-tale ending in the most literal sense, because Daly sends the young Emma on a solo quest that will reunite the family and restore a kind of order to their world. But at a key moment, he pauses for a striking series of city views from a high aspect that cannot help but recall those earlier vistas of landfills. Someday this too will be junk, he seems to be saying. At the moment, however, it's vital and alive thanks to the Nans and Emmas and, yes, the Colms of this world.

Life's a Breeze Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

No cinematographer is listed for Life's a Breeze, but Daly frequently acts as his own DP and cameraman, and that was apparently the case here. Information about the shooting format was not available, but the credits indicate that post-production was completed on a digital intermediate, so that Magnolia Home Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray was presumably sourced directly from digital files. The image has excellent depth, sharpness and clarity, and this is especially valuable in the many long shots of dump sites, where the vistas of debris register down to tiny minutia. The color palette runs the gamut from the faded interiors of Nan's house (before the makeover) and the delicate shades of the Irish countryside to the bright lights of the city at night. Blacks are very good, which is especially important in a late scene involving Emma's "quest".

With no extras to compete for space, Magnolia has achieved an average bitrate of 25 Mbps (the even number is the actual measurement from BDInfo), which is certainly sufficient for this material. No artifacts of any kind were observed.

Life's a Breeze Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The environments portrayed in Life's a Breeze are well-represented on the film's 5.1 soundtrack, encoded on Blu-ray in lossless DTS-HD MA. These include the school lunchroom, Nan's home in various states of crowding (including a raucous birthday celebration) and numerous dump sites and landfills with varying gatherings of people and seagulls. More often than not, however, the ambient sound mix is overpowered by the catchy and effective Irish folk score credited to Daly, Declan Quinn and Eugene Quinn and performed by the Quinns and a skilled band of musicians listed in the credits. The score plays with clarity and full dynamic range, and its unique brand of lively melancholy perfectly complements the film's tone. The dialogue is clear and, unlike Daly's earlier film Kisses, should not need any subtitling to assist with the accents. (They're available if needed, though.)

Life's a Breeze Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The disc has no extras other than the following, which are standard on Magnolia Blu-rays:

• Also from Magnolia Home Entertainment: The disc includes trailers for The Two Faces of January, Frontera, A Long Way Down and Frank, as well as promos for the Chideo web service and AXS TV. These also play at startup, where they can be skipped with the chapter forward button.



• BD-Live: As of this writing, attempting to access BD-Live gave the message "Check back for updates".

Life's a Breeze Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If a studio marketing department were given the job, Life's a Breeze would probably be promoted as a "feel good" movie. It certainly isn't a downer, but there's more to it than mere sentiment. Some things may change for the members of this family after the credits roll, but others will never change: not for them, not for their city and certainly not for the country in which they live. Fatalism and charm are two sides of the same coin in Irish storytelling, and the coin is usually being exchanged for a drink with which to drown life's sorrows. Highly recommended.