War of the Buttons

War of the Buttons is a 1994 comedy-drama adventure film directed by John Roberts. It was written by Colin Welland and based on the French novel La Guerre des boutons, by Louis Pergaud. The story, about two rival boys' gangs in Ireland, the Ballys (working class) and the Carricks (middle class), is set in County Cork, where it was filmed on location. The film has been classified as a drama and comedy, and the tone is frequently light and humorous. It examines issues of conflict and war, the actions and consequences of violence, and how it can divide and oppose people who can be friends as easily as they can be enemies. Plot In the Republic of Ireland in the 1960s, more precisely the centre of the bridge over the river that separates the Irish villages of Carrickdowse and Ballydowse, there is a white line that few young people dare cross. The boys of each village spend most of their time trying to upstage the other, whether over the sale of hospital raffle tickets, or something more important, such as deciding who is a "tosspot" and who is not, or, for that matter, defining "tosspot". This "War of the Buttons", in which the buttons from the enemies clothes are captured, has gone on as long as the youths can remember, and "to the death", though rarely does either group hurt more than its pride. The leader of the Ballys is Fergus (Gregg Fitzgerald), the son of a pauper family and an unpromising student who lives in a trailer on the edge of Ballydowse with his mother and abusive stepfather. What Fergus lacks in education, he makes up for in leadership, and the youth of Ballydowse will follow him anywhere. The members of the Ballys include Marie (Eveanna Ryan), the narrator, who revisits her memories of what happened from her adult viewpoint. The leader of the Carricks is Jerome (John Coffey), the son of a wealthy family. He is nicknamed Geronimo after the Apache tribal chief.