Moving outward from the spaces of the family and the pub, this chapter focuses on the more broadly constituted space of the city. Beginning in the late 1990s there emerged a new urban sensibility in Irish cinema that celebrated the city as a cosmopolitan and utopian space. Films such as About Adam (Stembridge 2000), When Brendan Met Trudy (Walsh 2001), Intermission (Crowley 2003) and Inside I’m Dancing (O’Connell 2004) express a desire to move away from traditional narratives and iconography by disavowing the past and projecting a utopian and liberal Ireland free from political and sectarian conflict. Martin McLoone has characterised these films as promoting a brand of ‘hip hedonism’, claiming that they ‘epitomise a kind of transglobal “cool” ‘ (2007: 212), while Ruth Barton has described this filmmaking practice as ‘the culturally specific desire not to be culturally specific’ (2004: 112). Whilst this re-imagining of Ireland through a re-imagining of urban space can be seen as an attempt to escape traditional markers of Irish cinematic identity, particularly those related to placehood and the rural imagery, this representational strategy has also been criticised for its failure to offer a clear sense of local identity. Thus, while the desire to not be culturally specific may be a strategy of avoiding a representational history steeped in issues around the nation and national identity, it also signals a potential inability to engage with contemporary political and social realities.

This becomes a particularly significant issue when considering the politics of queer representation. The majority of Irish queer films are structured by urban narratives, reinforcing a commonly held association of the city with the queer imaginary. The city is often theorised as a catalyst for the increased visibility (often conflated with a perceived increased tolerance) of minority groups. With regards to sexual minorities, David Bell and Jon Binnie claim that the city ‘is the primary site both for the materialization of sexual identity, community and politics, and for conflicts and struggles around sexual identity, community and politics’ (2000: 83). Because of the lack of resources available to queer citizens in rural areas and resulting feelings of isolation, the city is constructed in the queer imaginary as a beacon of tolerance and community, and Bell and Binnie cite Henning Bech's (1997) claim that the city is ‘the home of the homosexual’ (Bell and Binnie 2000: 84).