Latest news with #FourLettersofLove
Sydney Morning Herald
20 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Helena Bonham Carter and Pierce Brosnan can't save this clanger of a film
FOUR LETTERS OF LOVE ★★ (M) 109 minutes At the outset of Four Letters of Love, a man is touched by God. Toiling away in a dingy Dublin office, middle-aged civil servant William Coughlan (Pierce Brosnan) spies a square of sunlight on his desk and spontaneously decides to chuck it all in and become a painter. Before long, he's doing artist stuff like growing his hair shoulder-length and abandoning his family. Meanwhile, in the west of Ireland, we're introduced to Isabel Gore (Ann Skelly), a younger free spirit who says things like 'I want to go wild today' as she frolics on the edge of a cliff. With all that, we're still only a couple of minutes into this wildly over-the-top melodrama, directed by UK-based Polly Steele, whose previous credits include the unfortunately titled climbing documentary The Mountain Within Me, and scripted by the Irish writer Niall Williams, adapting his 1997 novel. Williams' field isn't out-and-out trash but a particular brand of frantic 'literary' overwriting, much of which gets channelled here into Fionn O'Shea's voiceover as William's son Nicholas, looking back at his early-1970s youth from decades on ('To these days I am to return again and again throughout my life, for in them is the immanence of love'). Isabel and Nicholas are soulmates, she with her frizzy red hair, he with his look of gormless yearning. But the film takes its time bringing them together, tantalising us by having them cross paths a couple of times without meeting. By halfway through, one of William's paintings has wound up in the possession of Isabel's parents, Margaret (Helena Bonham Carter) and Muiris (Gabriel Byrne). But even when Nicholas seeks it out, this isn't enough to put him in the same room as Isabel, who is meanwhile set on marrying Peader (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo), her designated Mr Wrong. In spirit, this is a very slightly elevated Hallmark movie – but there are worse things to be, and under the circumstances it's a point in Steele's favour that she isn't afraid of excess. Like Williams, she goes all out: wide-angle lenses, shafts of light illuminating otherwise drab interiors, sweeping shots of the craggy coastline with waves crashing onto rocks.
The Age
20 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Age
Helena Bonham Carter and Pierce Brosnan can't save this clanger of a film
FOUR LETTERS OF LOVE ★★ (M) 109 minutes At the outset of Four Letters of Love, a man is touched by God. Toiling away in a dingy Dublin office, middle-aged civil servant William Coughlan (Pierce Brosnan) spies a square of sunlight on his desk and spontaneously decides to chuck it all in and become a painter. Before long, he's doing artist stuff like growing his hair shoulder-length and abandoning his family. Meanwhile, in the west of Ireland, we're introduced to Isabel Gore (Ann Skelly), a younger free spirit who says things like 'I want to go wild today' as she frolics on the edge of a cliff. With all that, we're still only a couple of minutes into this wildly over-the-top melodrama, directed by UK-based Polly Steele, whose previous credits include the unfortunately titled climbing documentary The Mountain Within Me, and scripted by the Irish writer Niall Williams, adapting his 1997 novel. Williams' field isn't out-and-out trash but a particular brand of frantic 'literary' overwriting, much of which gets channelled here into Fionn O'Shea's voiceover as William's son Nicholas, looking back at his early-1970s youth from decades on ('To these days I am to return again and again throughout my life, for in them is the immanence of love'). Isabel and Nicholas are soulmates, she with her frizzy red hair, he with his look of gormless yearning. But the film takes its time bringing them together, tantalising us by having them cross paths a couple of times without meeting. By halfway through, one of William's paintings has wound up in the possession of Isabel's parents, Margaret (Helena Bonham Carter) and Muiris (Gabriel Byrne). But even when Nicholas seeks it out, this isn't enough to put him in the same room as Isabel, who is meanwhile set on marrying Peader (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo), her designated Mr Wrong. In spirit, this is a very slightly elevated Hallmark movie – but there are worse things to be, and under the circumstances it's a point in Steele's favour that she isn't afraid of excess. Like Williams, she goes all out: wide-angle lenses, shafts of light illuminating otherwise drab interiors, sweeping shots of the craggy coastline with waves crashing onto rocks.
RTÉ News
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- RTÉ News
Four Letters of Love is tourism bosses' dream movie
When the country was up in arms again, this time over Wild Mountain Thyme, the film's Irish-American writer-director, John Patrick Shanley, delivered the perfect response. Shanley told Variety that when he first talked to Emily Blunt about starring in the rom-com, he explained: "I'm not making this movie for the Irish. If you try to get the Irish to love you, no good will come of it. I'm making this movie for everybody else and all the people who want to go to Ireland." The same logic can be applied to Four Letters of Love, another film to make tourism bosses feel like all their St Patrick's Days have come at once. Based on Niall Williams' bestseller and adapted by the author himself, the romantic drama stocks up on screen talent and piles on the siúcra as love finds a way. It's about an artist (Pierce Brosnan), his son (Fionn O'Shea), a painting, and on an island on the other side of Ireland, a poet (Gabriel Byrne), his wife (Helena Bonham Carter), and their daughter (Ann Skelly). What brings them all together? Well, if "There's no such thing as chance. This was how it was meant to be", tugs at your heartstrings, then you'll be all-in to see magic realism do its thing here. Once again, the oul place (Donegal and Antrim) looks beautiful - so much so that plenty who'll watch this movie on a plane will ask the cabin crew if it's possible to change course. Away from the green begets green of that tourism angle, locals will discover that the accent carvery does a roaring trade here. Brosnan goes a-roving before finding a spot to call home, and the people on the island out wesht are from all over the shop, but Helen Bonham Carter makes a far better fist of a brogue than many would imagine. It's a cosy film, and, as one of its characters would no doubt muse, sure, there's room for that too. Don't be surprised if you've next summer's holiday decided by the closing credits.
Spectator
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Spectator
Definitely the film of the week: Four Letters of Love reviewed
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.
Irish Independent
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Four Letters of Love review: Irish actors who are unable to do Irish accents is becoming a worrying trend
We're in the Dublin of the early 1970s, where a job in the civil service is a thing to be clutched tightly. But a shaft of sunlight falling on his desk has led to William having a major epiphany – he's going to pack up a few things and move to the west coast to be an itinerant landscape artist. It's the kind of madly romantic gesture towards a meaningful existence that colours this long-mooted adaptation of Niall Williams's bestselling 1997 debut novel. The laws of poetry, love and art are nourishment enough for heart and soul and institutions such as Church and State only put a downer on things. Who could argue. The decision leaves Nicholas and Bette in the lurch and fending for themselves while their breadwinner goes off on his elaborate flight of fancy. Across the water from where William eventually sets up his easel, an island glistens off the western seaboard. It is home to the Gore household comprised of cultured, bohemian parents Margaret and Muiris (Helena Bonham Carter and Gabriel Byrne), their breezy and beautiful daughter Isabel (Ann Skelly) and son Sean (Dónal Finn). The Gore household is picture-perfect, you might say, an image of Irishness in tune with dancing, red-haired cailíní, quaintly cluttered kitchen dressers, and wee drams to wet the throat beside an evening fire. The Hibernian paradise undergoes a crack, however, when Sean is in an accident just as Isabel is readying herself to leave for convent school. She tears herself away nonetheless, only to fall foul of the nuns and run away with a roguish cad (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo). Isabel and Nicholas; Nicholas and Isabel. One is embarking on an adventure into early adulthood, romance and self-discovery, the other still reeling from the fallout to his family life by his father's sudden wilful abandonment. Their situations couldn't be less alike and yet they are, we're assured, bound together. Director Polly Steele's take on the novel – adapted for the screen by the Clare-based author himself – presents the two strands as being on a parallel journey towards a head-spinning (and predictably gooey) inevitability. Their pre-destination is signposted with the subtlety of a billboard until Nicholas embarks west in search of William and catches a glimpse of Isabel on the local bus and the direction of his young life suddenly shifts. The lush prophesying sweep of the narrative, the coincidences and serendipities and fateful mishaps, will be too sickly sweet for viewers of a cynical bent. ADVERTISEMENT Learn more Add to this the way it tiptoes along the fringes of 'stage Irish', flirting with a version of pre-1990s Ireland (pretty, cute, benign and sweetly befuddled), and Four Letters of Love's setting is almost outlandish when watched from seats on this island. And that might just be the whole idea. Right around the moment that you scratch your head at the shaky tenor of Brosnan's brogue (Irish actors who are unable to do Irish accents is becoming a worrying trend), a suspicion strikes you. Much like its source novel, Steele's film might also speak to a pre-destination: that of a love affair with cinemagoers beyond these shores. Sweeter than The Banshees of Inisherin, more fanciful than Brooklyn, this is about as unashamedly sentimental and syrupy as it gets, and those in search of a gentle, easy-on-the-eyes swoon will forgive the odd accent wobble, the patches of abrupt editing, or the clumsy dialogue replacement splices. Cinematographer Damien Elliottt and production designer John Leslie get that fantasy-realist netherworld just right. Cast members do what they must – Brosnan gives enigmatic scans of the wind-swept horizon; Byrne hunches over love poems and grunts good-naturedly at the youthful carry-on. Regardless of what region this film is experienced in, the star of the show is Bonham Carter, whose brilliant quips stop the whole thing from disappearing up its own Blarney. For an outing that applies such a honeyed filter to the Irish condition, it is her character's cranky benevolence and perfectly timed eye-rolls that might just be the most authentic national traits on show here.
