"Ondine," Colin Farrell’s labor of love

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CAHIR O'DOHERTY,

IrishCentral.com Staff Writer

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Alicja Bachleda and real life partner Colin Farrell in "Ondine"

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There’s more than one happy ending to be found in "Ondine," Neil Jordan’s slight but charming new film about the borderland between myth and reality, which opens next month and was featured last week as part of the Tribeca Film Festival.

Apart from the magic of the tale, there’s also the satisfying sight of a great Irish actor finally reconnecting with his own talent and rescuing his life and career from the grip of the tabloids, where it once looked destined to implode.

In "Ondine," Colin Farrell gives a performance that reminds us why so many of us were captivated by him in the first place. As Syracuse, Jordan’s unlikely hero, Farrell gives a sensitive, nuanced and immensely likeable performance (featuring a flawless Cork accent) that effortlessly carries the whole film.

As with almost all of Jordan’s projects, there’s more than a bit of life and art intersecting in this film. First of all Farrell plays a divorced Cork fisherman, the recovering alcoholic Syracuse (or Circus, as he’s mockingly nicknamed by the locals).

Syracuse is a good man who’s been brought low by his own weaknesses, but there’s still some fight in him. The temptation to see the overlap between the character and the actor playing him is at times overwhelming.

Syracuse, with his lovely Cork reticence and lack of ostentation, is a million miles from the Hollywood showboats that were Farrell’s stock in trade by the middle of the last decade. "Ondine" is about as far from "Alexander" and "Miami Vice" as it’s possible to get and thank God really, it’s a much better film.

Since his quiet and criminally underrated turn as the conscience stricken young man in Woody Allen’s "Cassandra’s Dream" in 2007, Farrell’s been reconnecting with the undiminished talent that originally made his name.

He certainly has the looks for macho shoot ‘em ups like "S.W.A.T." and "Pride and Glory," but the fact is that Farrell’s range as an actor is better suited to more complex and challenging work like "Ondine," "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" and "A Home at the End of the World."

Farrell’s also a terrific comic actor, a fact that is underappreciated, as his lovely, sarcastic turn in "In Bruges" demonstrated. That’s why it’s so good to see him emerge from the wild years of partying and excess.

Meeting Farrell in 2008 was a bit like meeting Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones in 1968. He was behaving like a world famous rock star, not an actor.

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