By Adam Perry

You know a movie is really Irish when it needs subtitles even for English speakers, and the hilarious and heart-wrenching “Four Mothers” is wicked Irish.

Writer-director Darren Thornton’s second feature, following 2016’s “A Date for Mad Mary,” “Four Mothers” finds an anxious middle-aged writer named Edward (played perfectly by James McCardle) fumbling over whether to finally try to hit it big by going on a book tour in the United States — which would mean leaving round-the-clock care of his elderly mother, who has suffered a stroke, to someone else or putting her in a home. The film will make its Colorado premiere at 1 p.m. Sunday at Boulder Theater.

Edward freezes, or awkwardly overcompensated, while doing interviews to promote his new young adult (YA) romance book. Being his mother’s nurse makes matters worse: she interrupts by typing advice on the iPad she uses to speak and she needs a bathroom visit while Edward is interviewed live on the radio.

McCardle expertly portrays the dichotomy of dismay, love and responsibility when three friends, who have bonded with him over their shared desperation and overwhelm in being their mothers’ caretakers, leave for a swinging Maspalomas Pride weekend and dump their moms on him.

When the nonstop caretaking is multiplied by four, rave reviews for Edward’s book start coming in from major American press entities. When Edward enlists help taking care of the four mothers from an ex-lover who is soon to be married, the novelist’s fear of becoming “quiet and dull” turns paradoxical because, in the end, each woman he’s caring for is a unique, strong, insufferable presence creating constant drama and adventure.

What would it be like to dream of delivering brilliant stories of “power and social structure” to YA readers worldwide while spending your days driving old ladies to see a medium, or racing around to find them morosely and drunkenly singing karaoke at a local dive? It would be maddening, but certainly not quiet or dull — and neither is “Four Mothers.”

Of course McCardle’s finest moments in the film aren’t the laugh-out-loud breakdowns when Edward, for instance, screams into a pillow out of mental exhaustion, they’re the very human and vulnerable snapshots of a caring, sensitive, lost man sleeping in (and doing interviews from) his car because there is no space of any kind for Edward at home.

His therapist — ironically one of the guys who foists his elderly mother on Edward — tells him to repeat, “I’m gonna stop taking care of other people and start taking care of myself.” But it’s clear that just doing one or the other doesn’t get you anywhere.

In the end, “Four Mothers” shows us that caretaking an elderly parent is much more than babysitting; it seems that, with some balance, we can learn to take care of ourselves as well as someone else, learning internally and externally at the same time, breaking down assumptions and long-held trauma, guilt and confusion along the way — if you have the patience.

Most memorably, Edward is one of the most complex and inherently watchable characters in recent film; he can be a selfish a**hole or a nervous wreck, but he never gives up on what he cares about, which happens to be his mom and his career — two things that are virtually impossible to care for at the same time.

“Live your life,” Edward’s 81-year-old mother, played equally expertly by Fionnula Flanagan, eventually tells him through her iPad, but Edward’s life is everything in it, not just his book tour.

You don’t have to be the most altruistic or empathetic person to see how hard Edward tries. And you also don’t have to be a middle-aged Irish gay man to appreciate the most affecting scene in “Four Mothers” — the fiery old women sitting around showing how relevant and different they and their queer kids are by sharing their sons’ coming-out stories.