A more unlikely film you won’t see this year. Cillian Murphy (Batman Begins, Redeye) drops his intimidating persona to tackle the whimsical, desperately unserious Patrick ‘Kitten’ Braden. The love-child of a local priest and a woman resembling Mitzi Gaynor, Patrick’s meant for more fashionable flavours than mid-60’s, rural Ireland. With a transvestite on one hand and Pat McCabe’s novel on the other, director Neil Jordan seeks to meld several of his own films into one. Michael Collins meets The Crying Game at The End of an Affair. Kind of.

Quoting Oscar Wilde, CGI robins set a fanciful stage as we’re led through 36 chapters of Kitten’s colourful life. She seeks to find her estranged mother and heads to London. There are interludes with IRA guerrillas, glam-rockers, a murderous curb-crawler, a magician, British police, prostitutes and a night-club bombing. Then there’s Uncle Bulgaria, and Mitzi herself.

Kitten tries to resist the darker forces, always asking why everyone must be so serious. Jordan expects us to sympathise with her whining but gives us slight reason to do so. He forces an uneasy alliance between her naivety and a cruel, shocking reality. Yet Kitten is unrelentingly self-absorbed and not so much naïve as simple: there’s little to like about this twittering creature and surreal diversions don’t help. As a Channel No.5 wielding super-heroine, she is amusing but so undermines the tone of violence it muddies Jordan’s purpose. Quite what the sidebar doodlings serve, and there are many, is never particularly clear. Although it gets better as it progresses, Breakfast On Pluto is like its protagonist, a glittery creation of limited appeal.

// COLIN FRASER