Spoilers. This is the sort of story that Southern writers used to be good at. Carson MacCullers, say, or Harper Lee, if they'd have thrown in a bit of travelogue. Maybe it comes from living in small, homogeneous communities in which the slightest of individual quirks draw attention to themselves. Somebody is a deaf-mute, or intellectually challenged, or a Jew. And the question the presence of such people raises is an interesting one: How can such marginal persons establish anything resembling normal relationships with others?
In Ireland, when it rains gently, it is called "a soft day," and this entire movie is rather like that sort of Irish weather. The story briefly: Bernadette leaves a ruined post-war France on an American troopship and is impregnated on board before disembarking in Ireland, where she gives birth to a dwarf. I don't know that the dwarf really "stands for" anything, as did a similar figure in "The Tin Drum." The rest of the film alternates between Bernadette's early abortive attempt to escape her dreary life in Dublin and move to Texas with an ex-soldier who remembered her from the troopship, a nice guy really, and the story, set in the present, of Frankie, her son, who has grown up and become a successful author. After their return to Ireland, Bernadette is depressed and decides to end her distress. Frankie finds happiness with a girl he loved during childhood and now, reencountering her at a book signing, courts briefly and marries.
All of the performances are more than adequate. The actor playing Frankie as a child is especially effective, with a frank, open, lovable face and a shock of red hair atop his truncated body and limbs. He's also smart, sensitive, and talented, and it's possible to see easily how he matured into an accomplished artist, though he carries his anguish and self-consciousness with him into adulthood. Bernadette seems to be in an understandable state of shock during the entire story, moved by whim and circumstance rather than deliberation. Matt Dillon's part is less complex than most of the others. He really loves Bernadette and adores Frankie the child and loses them both. leaving him with his own two children and a wife who has the temperament and moral values of a black hornet. The happy ending, if that's what it is, isn't tacked on willy nilly but evolves naturally out of preceding events.
It's a nicely done fairy tale. It's low keyed in almost every way and insinuates itself into your involvement only with the passage of a bit of time. Patience is called for. I enjoyed it and, unless you have hunger pangs for explosive fireballs, you may enjoy it too. A warning, though -- these days I find myself enjoying almost every movie that doesn't have high speed car chases and explosive fireballs.
In Ireland, when it rains gently, it is called "a soft day," and this entire movie is rather like that sort of Irish weather. The story briefly: Bernadette leaves a ruined post-war France on an American troopship and is impregnated on board before disembarking in Ireland, where she gives birth to a dwarf. I don't know that the dwarf really "stands for" anything, as did a similar figure in "The Tin Drum." The rest of the film alternates between Bernadette's early abortive attempt to escape her dreary life in Dublin and move to Texas with an ex-soldier who remembered her from the troopship, a nice guy really, and the story, set in the present, of Frankie, her son, who has grown up and become a successful author. After their return to Ireland, Bernadette is depressed and decides to end her distress. Frankie finds happiness with a girl he loved during childhood and now, reencountering her at a book signing, courts briefly and marries.
All of the performances are more than adequate. The actor playing Frankie as a child is especially effective, with a frank, open, lovable face and a shock of red hair atop his truncated body and limbs. He's also smart, sensitive, and talented, and it's possible to see easily how he matured into an accomplished artist, though he carries his anguish and self-consciousness with him into adulthood. Bernadette seems to be in an understandable state of shock during the entire story, moved by whim and circumstance rather than deliberation. Matt Dillon's part is less complex than most of the others. He really loves Bernadette and adores Frankie the child and loses them both. leaving him with his own two children and a wife who has the temperament and moral values of a black hornet. The happy ending, if that's what it is, isn't tacked on willy nilly but evolves naturally out of preceding events.
It's a nicely done fairy tale. It's low keyed in almost every way and insinuates itself into your involvement only with the passage of a bit of time. Patience is called for. I enjoyed it and, unless you have hunger pangs for explosive fireballs, you may enjoy it too. A warning, though -- these days I find myself enjoying almost every movie that doesn't have high speed car chases and explosive fireballs.