Joyride 2022

Twelve-year-old Mully, Charlie Reid, whose mother Rita has recently died of cancer, lives with his deadbeat father James in County Kerry, Ireland. At a charity event held in Rita’s honor, Mully uncovers a cruel truth: James has siphoned off the money collected to cover his mounting debts. He grabs the stash, runs away, and, stumbling upon a stationary taxi, drives off into an uncertain night.

Mully soon discovers he isn’t alone in the back seat. There is Joy, Olivia Colman, a middle‑aged woman in a drunken stupor, cradling her newborn baby. The infant’s cries overwhelm Joy at first, but Mully’s calm demeanour helps soothe the child, and an unlikely bond begins to form between the boy and the woman. In a bold move, Mully swaps the taxi for a car on a used‑car lot and insists on steering the journey himself, steering away from the most obvious checkpoints to keep them under the radar since he is underage and unlicensed behind the wheel. The two strangers drift into a tentative partnership, quarrelling at times yet slowly discovering a shared need for connection and survival.

With fuel running low, they walk to a nearby station to refuel, and Mully suggests a game of questions and answers to pass the time. He explains the hospice money scam, and Joy confesses she plans to give the baby up to her friend Mags and eventually fly to Lanzarote, admitting she has not bonded with the infant and cannot tell who the father is. A call to James at the petrol station nudges them toward a ferry, a plan Joy initially resists but ultimately accepts after a police checkpoint mishap pushes them toward a new route.

While they wait for the ferry, Mully helps Joy learn how to breastfeed the newborn—Robin, a name she chose after spotting a robin nearby—drawing on Mully’s memories of caring for his own infant sibling. Joy reveals that she and Rita had been in the same year at school; Joy recalls being one of the brightest students, while Rita was stunningly beautiful. The moment deepens their uneasy alliance, and Mully’s father eventually closes the gap by proposing that Joy and Robin join them for a while longer in the car. Joy obliges, hoping for a sense of safety and a chance to figure out what comes next.

Joy’s bleeding forces a pause in their journey, and they stop at a bed and breakfast so she can clean up and rest. Meanwhile, James hatches a plan of his own—fabricating a story about Mully stealing the money and getting robbed—to lay the groundwork for a more stable getaway for himself. Joy reaches out to her childhood friend Mags, explaining that she delivered the baby a week early, that the baby is named Robin, and that Robin has been breastfed. She also shares a troubling childhood memory: witnessing her father cheat on her mother, followed by a moment when her mother hesitated to save her from the undertow’s pull, a memory that continues to haunt her.

The next morning, Joy returns the hospice money to Mully so he can try to return what was stolen. Hurt and overwhelmed by Joy’s decision to give up Robin, he lashes out in anger. In a daze, Joy makes a drastic choice and leaves Robin on Mags’s doorstep, then drives toward Kerry airport, trying to reconcile her growing feelings with the harsh reality of her past and the life she’s leaving behind.

Joy boards a Spain‑bound plane, but her conscience spurs a sudden reversal. She demands to be allowed off and races back to find Mully. When she locates him, he initially scolds her, but James arrives, demanding the money back. Joy places herself between Mully and his father, trying to shield him, while Mully races into the water and hurls the cash away. James retrieves the money, but Joy dives in to pull Mully back to shore, and she plays a critical role in saving him from the distressing turn of events.

The film closes on a note of precarious possibility. Mags phones Joy to collect a distraught Robin, and Joy drives past the pub with Mully, determined to return the stolen funds and, in doing so, to keep the fragile bond they’ve formed alive. Together, they resume their journey with the baby, navigating a landscape of fear, hope, and unexpected kinship as they decide what family can mean in extraordinary circumstances.