Neil Jordan reaches deep into his Celtic soul and comes up with ONDINE, a dark romance that teases the meaning of myth into the starkly contemporary setting of a small Irish fishing village. The time is the present, but the location gives a timeless quality to the story of a fisherman who nets a beautiful woman without a name and who may or may not be a creature of Scottish legend, a selkie, rather than merely a woman of other-worldly beauty and even more other-worldly mystery.
The fisherman is Syracuse (Colin Farrell), also know as Circus for his formerly clownish ways that included heavy drinking. A good-hearted man who forsook the bottle for the sake of his chronically ill daughter, Annie (Alison Barry), it also got him booted out of the house by his wife (Dervla Kerwan), who chose alcohol over him. He makes an honest if meager living until the day he lands Ondine, who has a strange accent, no memory, and a way of singing that seems to compel the ocean to fill his nets and lobster pots. It also fills his soul with tender, even protective, emotions, including a protective instinct when Ondine, the name she chooses for herself in honor of the sea, refuses to let anyone else see her.
When he tells the story in the form of a fairy tale to his daughter while she undergoes dialysis, the girl, a precocious 10-year-old scholar, decides that Ondine is a selkie, a seal who sheds its skin to come on land and who sometimes unexpectedly finds happiness with a landsman. Annie also decides that because her father is incapable of telling a good story, that this one must be true, leading to an expedition to the lonely house her father keeps, an odd bond between the woman and the girl, and a great deal of gossip around the small town.
Its not so much that Jordan keeps the characters guessing about Ondines true identity, its that he also manages to keep the audience guessing, too. The modern, concrete world view struggles with the insistent tug of wishing for the magical to be real. When a wish that Ondine makes comes true, albeit within the strict confines of the rules of reality, the benefit of the doubt lands squarely and without hesitation with the aetherial. Its a feeling abetted by Bachledas air of mysteries too deep to be easily revealed and by such haunting images as Ondine rising gracefully from the waves and walking unselfconsciously to the shore, dress clinging diaphanously to her curves, hair swirling like seaweed. And by the deep longing Syracuse has for Ondine to stay no matter what her true story is, her existence being all the truth he needs.
There is a brooding look as well as mood to the film, sparked with an equally dark humor, with Syracuse using confession to the local priest (Stephen Rea) in lieu of the non-existent AA meetings that he needs to remain sober, and Annies perfect acceptance of Ondines selkie identity.
Farrell broods as well, but tempers it with a sweet and good nature that is part of his touching lack of ill-feeling towards his ex, who scolds, and her current paramour, who mocks. The other part of that acceptance is more problematical, though, as the priest puts it to him pointedly, misery is easy, happiness you have to work at.
Its an idea as unexpected as a selkie pairing off with a landsman, but as a psychological insight its intriguing and full of more truth than one expects. ONDINE works its magic in peculiar and unexpected ways that make it both beguiling and delightful without ever being simple-minded or obvious. Rich in satisfying twists and in small moments of enormous power, its a compelling excursion to both the watery and the subconscious depths.
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