New independent Irish films wow critics

By

Cahir O'Doherty,

Irish America Magazine

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Zonad, the alien visitor from another world, startles the Cassidy family.

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As the film begins, the three boys’ free-spirited father (Don Wycherley) is already close to death and the eldest boy is busy storing his fears in a private journal. “Soon it will be over,” writes 17-year-old Noel (Timmy Creed, in an impressive screen debut). “Soon it will be every man for himself.”

As you’re watching it, it’s increasingly hard to tell if the film is autobiographical or fiction because it’s so well observed that it feels personal, as if it were the record of an actual life experience replayed in front of your eyes.

It’s the slow-motion death of their father and the three boys’ individual responses to the fact that makes the film unforgettable. Noel, the oldest boy, is already haunted by the inevitable, but Paudie (Paul Courtney), the spirited 12-year-old middle kid, has decided the way to get through it is by telling jokes (even though there’s real pathos hidden beneath all his playacting). That leaves Scwally, the 7-year-old Star Wars-obsessed kid, who can’t quite grasp the gravity of the situation they’re facing into. The 1987 milieu and the relentless reality of the tone and setting make this a new Irish film not to be missed.

Neither Colin Farrell nor Neil Jordan need an introduction at this point, but their decision to work together on Ondine, a beguiling Irish yarn about a man who falls for a woman who may well be a mermaid, works like a dream.

There’s a late Shakespearian feel to this tale of discovery and forgiveness that was shot on an independent budget. Farrell plays a divorced County Cork fisherman, the recovering alcoholic named Syracuse (or Circus, as he’s mockingly nicknamed by the locals). Syracuse is a good man brought low by his own weaknesses but there’s still some fight in him, and the temptation to see the overlap between the character and the actor playing him is at times overwhelming.

As Farrell gets to grips with the considerable challenge of a Cork accent, there’s also the pleasure of seeing the star reconnect with his own talent. Jordan was astute to cast the young actor whose own personal life was becoming a five-alarm fire. It’s love that restores Syracuse to himself, and it was Ondine that introduced Farrell to his real-life partner, the gorgeous Polish actress Alicja Bachleda, his co-star in the film. That dual awareness makes the happy ending all the sweeter.

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