Here, finally, one of the recent mysteries of recent Irish cinema is unveiled in all its peculiar glory.
Filmed in 2025 around various Dublin locations – the Pigeon House and Capel Street feature prominently – and in Naas, Co Kildare, the latest film from the great Werner Herzog stars Rooney and Kate Mara as Jean and Joan Holbrooke, sisters living oddly among the kind and the unkind.
Premiering in competition at Venice International Film Festival, Bucking Fastard (have fun advertising that title), is not among the German eccentric’s best films, but it is stuffed with diverting vignettes that reveal his imagination is as creatively offbeat as ever.
The director uses the story of Freda and Greta Chaplin, twins from York charged with harassing a taxi driver in the 1980s, as a mere starting point for a largely unconnected, rambling (though not overlong) yarn.
We begin with the two up in court for similarly awkward behaviour towards a neighbour played, with slightly wandering Dublin accent, by a perfectly sound Orlando Bloom. Simon Delaney is the judge. Hugh O’Conor is one of the barristers.
When any new character pops over the horizon just assume he’s an older Irish great, a cult legend or some other domestic familiar to whom you can’t quite put a name. Full marks to Maureen Hughes for casting direction of the classiest order.
The Maras, enjoying their first time on screen together, are uncanny in their connection. Lines are delivered in unison. Movements are perfectly mirrored. Nobody does much work in explaining why they are American, but it is just that sort of take-it-or-leave-it film.
Domhnall Gleeson is touching as a care worker who, in the most delicate possible fashion, aims to demonstrate why it might be best if they tried to act independently. After all, opening a tin of sardines as a unit once drove them half-insane.
‘Werner Herzog lives every day like he wants his life to be an adventure’
This is all amusing enough in its smallish way. The film only reaches something like peak Herzog when, late on, the two launch a plan to carve their way through high ground towards Orkney. “Everybody should dig a tunnel through a mountain,” Jean-Joan remarks (providing life advice of use to only a handful).
One can’t help but think of the hero heaving his ship over a mountain in Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo or of Aguirre’s quixotic madness in his Aguirre: The Wrath of God. This is altogether a tidier form of hubris, but it is moving in how it connects two ends of the German’s career. Another great is honoured at the beginning of the picture with a dedication to the late David Lynch. He would have appreciated Bucking Fastard’s proud oddness.