The punky power pop of Ash goes into overdrive on the soundtrack as a woman wearing flip-flops and a wedding dress runs through a field. A second woman, also in full marriage regalia, stalks along the hard shoulder of a motorway. Welcome to romantic comedy, Irish style.

From Cary Grant to Woody Allen, “romcom” has been a Hollywood staple. However, it has rarely been done well in Ireland, where film-makers have too often tried to inject Irish themes into the conventions of the genre, which revolve around overcoming the obstacles placed in the path of true love and tend not to take account of Irish divorce laws and Catholic guilt.

Karl Golden, writer and director of The Honeymooners, has found a unique solution to the problem. Shot quickly on digital video, The Honeymooners has a raw, spontaneous feel. Rather than trying to transplant the glossy fantasy of When Harry Met Sally, it comes at romance from an oblique angle.

Turning the tiny budget to his advantage, Golden concentrates on characters and plot. All the screwball twists of classic romantic comedy are present and correct, but masked by a layer of dirty realism. Golden is out to prove that such grittiness does not have to be downbeat, and that it is possible to please the audience with character rather than spectacle. In doing so, he has also helped the overdue revival of the low-budget feature film here.

A couple of years ago it seemed that there was little future for low-budget films, whether made in Ireland or elsewhere. Hollywood blockbusters dominated to the exclusion of almost everything else, and they had conditioned audiences to expect glossy production values and incessant special effects. There was little hope, it appeared, that character-based films could compete with spectaculars such as The Lord of the Rings.

But something has changed. In part, this is due to shifting perceptions in the film business. As multiplex cinemas grew ever larger, their programmers realised that variety could be profitable. Small films may still be a minority taste, but it is a minority sufficiently large enough to warrant showing them in mainstream cinemas.

The audience is also changing: the distinctions between commercial and artistic movies make little sense to them. And for young film-makers such as Golden, reaching an audience is imperative. “We aimed for an indie multiplex movie,” he says. “There’s a grey area that is neither Hollywood nor European art house. That’s where I want to make films.”

In the past, too many Irish films have sunk without trace. Passed over by distributors, they were seen only at film festivals. Golden, and other young directors such as Robert Quinn and Shimmy Marcus, have learnt from this experience. The Honeymooners is tight, fast and focused. It has none of the self-indulgent flourishes that have marred earlier films.

Golden is not trying to say anything profound about contemporary Ireland or modern relationships. He is simply telling a story that could happen anywhere. While he wants his characters to be real and recognisable to the audience, they are not designed as emblems of Irishness or stereotypical products of their generation.

“I’ve never believed in the notion of national cinema,” he says. “There are good films and bad films. The Honeymooners shows a different Ireland from 10 years ago, but it’s not a comment on Irish society. I wasn’t interested in that, just in the characters and their situation.”

Like the best romantic comedies, The Honeymooners is sharp and well scripted. The plot is simple: a young couple, played by Jonathan Byrne and Alex Reid, find themselves reluctantly sharing a holiday cottage in the wilds of Donegal. He has been jilted on his wedding day, she has walked out on her married lover and lost her job. At first they are strangers who barely tolerate one another’s presence, but are thrown together when their domineering exes arrive to reclaim them. Although eccentric locals complicate matters — there are misunderstandings with sheep, guns and a water bed — romance finally blossoms.

As with Danny Boyle’s zombie movie 28 Days Later, Golden makes a virtue of necessity. Shooting on video, with natural light and no make-up, he achieves an edgy, spontaneous mood. The film was shot in chronological sequence without rehearsal. Indeed, Byrne and Reid had not met before filming, and as a result, the mutual thawing of their characters mirrors reality.

“They really were strangers,” says Golden. “There’s a genuine awkwardness between them. Over the course of three weeks they became close. If we rehearsed, if they got too friendly, they wouldn’t respond in the same way.”