Definitely the film of the week: Four Letters of Love reviewed

Spectator

16-07-2025

In the brief lull between last week's summer blockbuster (Superman) and next week's (Fantastic Four) you may wish to catch Four Letters of Love. Based on the internationally bestselling novel (1997) by Niall Williams, it's a quiet, lyrical, Irish love story featuring a superb cast (Helena Bonham Carter, Pierce Brosnan, Gabriel Byrne) and no dinosaurs marauding through town. Or none that I noticed, I should add. (See: Jurassic World Rebirth, week before last.)
Williams has adapted his own book and the director is Polly Steele (The Mountain Within Me, Let Me Go). The film is set in 1970 or thereabouts and our narrator is Nicholas (Fionn O'Shea), a Dublin teenager whose father William (Brosnan) works for the civil service 'until one empty afternoon God spoke to him for the first time'. The light coming in from a window falls on his blotting paper in such a way that he decides it's divine intervention and he's being told to leave his employment and become a painter. 'I have to do it,' he explains to his incredulous wife Bette (Imelda May). 'It's what God wants me to do.'
He grows his hair long and disappears for months on end to the west coast to pursue his painterly ambitions, while Nicholas, a solemnly earnest soul, frets and Bette slowly loses her mind. I wasn't sure I could root for someone whose self-actualisation necessitates the abandonment of family but then remembered I've never experienced light hitting blotting paper in that way. (Or not that I have ever noticed, I should add.) I hoped he was a decent painter, at least, but we don't see a single picture until right at the end and he is certainly prophetic. Best leave it at that.
The other main character is Isabel (Ann Skelly), who lives on an island off the Galway coast. She has an adored brother, Sean (Donal Finn), who was mysteriously struck down one day. He is now mute and in a wheelchair. She is a lively lass, a free spirit and all that, and we meet her on her 'last day of childhood', wheeling her brother to the beach, before sailing to the (strict) convent school on the mainland. Her schoolmaster father, Muiris (Byrne), who is also a poet, is preparing for her sad departure as is her mother, Margaret (Bonham Carter). We know that Nicholas and Isabel belong together and will find each other because he says so right at the outset. But how? And when?
For most of the film we cut between the two characters as we follow the various twists and turns, which sometimes prove to be wrong turns, particularly when wrong lovers are taken, and sex is mistaken for love. There is magical realism, and ghosts, and poetry. It always feels like a literary adaptation, thanks to its extensive use of voiceover, which I tend to think of as cheating – show, don't tell? – and because the pair are mostly kept apart, their connection, when it comes, feels rather rushed and unearned.
But Steele directs with a sure hand and there is much else to delight in here. The cinematography has never made the Irish coast look so gorgeous (or sunny) or the cottages, with their jewel-coloured interiors, so cosy and the performances are all excellent. In particular I would single out Bonham Carter whom you don't look at and think: Irish matriarch. But she is wonderfully compelling as one of those women who keeps everything afloat and just deals with whatever life throws at her. Her scenes with Byrne speak of a long marriage. The others bring sincerity, including Brosnan, although you do have to get over the hair. If you can.
It's definitely the film of the week if you are in the mood for a film although, alternatively, there is Smurfs, the sixth in the franchise. Up to you.