Latest news with #FourLettersofLove
The Advertiser
2 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Advertiser
This Irish romantic drama takes its sweet time, to be sure
Truman Capote wrote, "More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones." In this film, God seems to be playing with that idea, toying with people's hopes and dreams and lives, giving them inspiration that leads to suffering, and granting at least some wishes but with a twist or a capricious sense of timing. Or maybe it's all down to some other kind of supernatural goings-on, or to fate. Or, if you're not into such metaphysical speculations, maybe things like coincidence just happen. This Irish romantic drama takes its sweet time to unfold and then crams a lot towards the end in a rush that hinders, rather than enhances, its impact. We have to wait a long time before the young lovers even meet, and even longer to discover what the title means. Niall Williams adapted his own novel: it's his first movie script, and the task might have been better entrusted to a screenwriter with more experience and objectivity. Four Letters of Love is also full of cliches from the Emerald Isle and from movies set there. Dancing merry jigs to jolly songs? Tick. A stern Mother Superior at a drab Catholic girls' boarding school? Tick. Impractical husbands and longsuffering wives? A score featuring wordless, ethereal female vocals? To be sure, to be sure. There are no banshees, but there do appear to be ghosts. There's also some spectacular scenery, gorgeously shot by Damien Elliott. The story begins in the 1970s. One day at the office, civil servant William Coughlin (Pierce Brosnan) has an epiphany and chucks in his job to become a painter. He abruptly leaves his wife Bette (Imelda May) and son Nicholas (Fionn O'Shea) to head west, leaving them bewildered and poor: Bette never recovers from the shock, and William comes and goes as he pleases. Meanwhile, on the island where William goes to paint, Isabel (Ann Skelly) is helping to care for her brother Sean (Donal Finn), who's wheelchair-bound and mute after a stroke. Isabel's parents - schoolteacher Muiris (Gabriel Byrne) and mother Margaret (Helena Bonham Carter) - send her off to a boarding school but she runs away and takes up with Peadar (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo), a musician with a car. He's an underdeveloped character, essentially a plot contrivance to complicate things between Nicholas and Isabel, but he's not a cardboard cad. Williams and experienced director Polly Steele (Let Me Go) do a fair job of juggling the moves between time and place but sometimes important elements - like a painting by William that plays a crucial role - aren't dealt with as clearly or skilfully as they should be. As mentioned, it takes a long time for Nicholas and Isabel to meet, after a near miss or two, and their falling in love feels rather too rushed and underplayed. Not that the full gushing Hollywood treatment was needed but the handling seems clumsy. The way Nicholas is kept around for story purposes isn't entirely convincing either. There's an air of muted fatalism about things: people don't seem to get too passionate or upset. The film benefits from a fine cast. O'Shea was very likeable in the heartwarming boarding-school drama Handsome Devil (in which he starred with Nicholas Galitzine) and, playing a fairly subdued character here, is a sympathetic hero throughout. Skelly is also very good: you hope things will end well for them. Brosnan seems slightly odd casting as a scruffy bohemian but he and the other veterans are good to have around. Romantic dramas can end happily or tragically, hopefully or bittersweetly: without spoiling the film, the ending doesn't seem entirely clear, which is a little frustrating. But the painting, when finally viewed, does have some impact. It, like the film, could have had more. Truman Capote wrote, "More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones." In this film, God seems to be playing with that idea, toying with people's hopes and dreams and lives, giving them inspiration that leads to suffering, and granting at least some wishes but with a twist or a capricious sense of timing. Or maybe it's all down to some other kind of supernatural goings-on, or to fate. Or, if you're not into such metaphysical speculations, maybe things like coincidence just happen. This Irish romantic drama takes its sweet time to unfold and then crams a lot towards the end in a rush that hinders, rather than enhances, its impact. We have to wait a long time before the young lovers even meet, and even longer to discover what the title means. Niall Williams adapted his own novel: it's his first movie script, and the task might have been better entrusted to a screenwriter with more experience and objectivity. Four Letters of Love is also full of cliches from the Emerald Isle and from movies set there. Dancing merry jigs to jolly songs? Tick. A stern Mother Superior at a drab Catholic girls' boarding school? Tick. Impractical husbands and longsuffering wives? A score featuring wordless, ethereal female vocals? To be sure, to be sure. There are no banshees, but there do appear to be ghosts. There's also some spectacular scenery, gorgeously shot by Damien Elliott. The story begins in the 1970s. One day at the office, civil servant William Coughlin (Pierce Brosnan) has an epiphany and chucks in his job to become a painter. He abruptly leaves his wife Bette (Imelda May) and son Nicholas (Fionn O'Shea) to head west, leaving them bewildered and poor: Bette never recovers from the shock, and William comes and goes as he pleases. Meanwhile, on the island where William goes to paint, Isabel (Ann Skelly) is helping to care for her brother Sean (Donal Finn), who's wheelchair-bound and mute after a stroke. Isabel's parents - schoolteacher Muiris (Gabriel Byrne) and mother Margaret (Helena Bonham Carter) - send her off to a boarding school but she runs away and takes up with Peadar (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo), a musician with a car. He's an underdeveloped character, essentially a plot contrivance to complicate things between Nicholas and Isabel, but he's not a cardboard cad. Williams and experienced director Polly Steele (Let Me Go) do a fair job of juggling the moves between time and place but sometimes important elements - like a painting by William that plays a crucial role - aren't dealt with as clearly or skilfully as they should be. As mentioned, it takes a long time for Nicholas and Isabel to meet, after a near miss or two, and their falling in love feels rather too rushed and underplayed. Not that the full gushing Hollywood treatment was needed but the handling seems clumsy. The way Nicholas is kept around for story purposes isn't entirely convincing either. There's an air of muted fatalism about things: people don't seem to get too passionate or upset. The film benefits from a fine cast. O'Shea was very likeable in the heartwarming boarding-school drama Handsome Devil (in which he starred with Nicholas Galitzine) and, playing a fairly subdued character here, is a sympathetic hero throughout. Skelly is also very good: you hope things will end well for them. Brosnan seems slightly odd casting as a scruffy bohemian but he and the other veterans are good to have around. Romantic dramas can end happily or tragically, hopefully or bittersweetly: without spoiling the film, the ending doesn't seem entirely clear, which is a little frustrating. But the painting, when finally viewed, does have some impact. It, like the film, could have had more. Truman Capote wrote, "More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones." In this film, God seems to be playing with that idea, toying with people's hopes and dreams and lives, giving them inspiration that leads to suffering, and granting at least some wishes but with a twist or a capricious sense of timing. Or maybe it's all down to some other kind of supernatural goings-on, or to fate. Or, if you're not into such metaphysical speculations, maybe things like coincidence just happen. This Irish romantic drama takes its sweet time to unfold and then crams a lot towards the end in a rush that hinders, rather than enhances, its impact. We have to wait a long time before the young lovers even meet, and even longer to discover what the title means. Niall Williams adapted his own novel: it's his first movie script, and the task might have been better entrusted to a screenwriter with more experience and objectivity. Four Letters of Love is also full of cliches from the Emerald Isle and from movies set there. Dancing merry jigs to jolly songs? Tick. A stern Mother Superior at a drab Catholic girls' boarding school? Tick. Impractical husbands and longsuffering wives? A score featuring wordless, ethereal female vocals? To be sure, to be sure. There are no banshees, but there do appear to be ghosts. There's also some spectacular scenery, gorgeously shot by Damien Elliott. The story begins in the 1970s. One day at the office, civil servant William Coughlin (Pierce Brosnan) has an epiphany and chucks in his job to become a painter. He abruptly leaves his wife Bette (Imelda May) and son Nicholas (Fionn O'Shea) to head west, leaving them bewildered and poor: Bette never recovers from the shock, and William comes and goes as he pleases. Meanwhile, on the island where William goes to paint, Isabel (Ann Skelly) is helping to care for her brother Sean (Donal Finn), who's wheelchair-bound and mute after a stroke. Isabel's parents - schoolteacher Muiris (Gabriel Byrne) and mother Margaret (Helena Bonham Carter) - send her off to a boarding school but she runs away and takes up with Peadar (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo), a musician with a car. He's an underdeveloped character, essentially a plot contrivance to complicate things between Nicholas and Isabel, but he's not a cardboard cad. Williams and experienced director Polly Steele (Let Me Go) do a fair job of juggling the moves between time and place but sometimes important elements - like a painting by William that plays a crucial role - aren't dealt with as clearly or skilfully as they should be. As mentioned, it takes a long time for Nicholas and Isabel to meet, after a near miss or two, and their falling in love feels rather too rushed and underplayed. Not that the full gushing Hollywood treatment was needed but the handling seems clumsy. The way Nicholas is kept around for story purposes isn't entirely convincing either. There's an air of muted fatalism about things: people don't seem to get too passionate or upset. The film benefits from a fine cast. O'Shea was very likeable in the heartwarming boarding-school drama Handsome Devil (in which he starred with Nicholas Galitzine) and, playing a fairly subdued character here, is a sympathetic hero throughout. Skelly is also very good: you hope things will end well for them. Brosnan seems slightly odd casting as a scruffy bohemian but he and the other veterans are good to have around. Romantic dramas can end happily or tragically, hopefully or bittersweetly: without spoiling the film, the ending doesn't seem entirely clear, which is a little frustrating. But the painting, when finally viewed, does have some impact. It, like the film, could have had more. Truman Capote wrote, "More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones." In this film, God seems to be playing with that idea, toying with people's hopes and dreams and lives, giving them inspiration that leads to suffering, and granting at least some wishes but with a twist or a capricious sense of timing. Or maybe it's all down to some other kind of supernatural goings-on, or to fate. Or, if you're not into such metaphysical speculations, maybe things like coincidence just happen. This Irish romantic drama takes its sweet time to unfold and then crams a lot towards the end in a rush that hinders, rather than enhances, its impact. We have to wait a long time before the young lovers even meet, and even longer to discover what the title means. Niall Williams adapted his own novel: it's his first movie script, and the task might have been better entrusted to a screenwriter with more experience and objectivity. Four Letters of Love is also full of cliches from the Emerald Isle and from movies set there. Dancing merry jigs to jolly songs? Tick. A stern Mother Superior at a drab Catholic girls' boarding school? Tick. Impractical husbands and longsuffering wives? A score featuring wordless, ethereal female vocals? To be sure, to be sure. There are no banshees, but there do appear to be ghosts. There's also some spectacular scenery, gorgeously shot by Damien Elliott. The story begins in the 1970s. One day at the office, civil servant William Coughlin (Pierce Brosnan) has an epiphany and chucks in his job to become a painter. He abruptly leaves his wife Bette (Imelda May) and son Nicholas (Fionn O'Shea) to head west, leaving them bewildered and poor: Bette never recovers from the shock, and William comes and goes as he pleases. Meanwhile, on the island where William goes to paint, Isabel (Ann Skelly) is helping to care for her brother Sean (Donal Finn), who's wheelchair-bound and mute after a stroke. Isabel's parents - schoolteacher Muiris (Gabriel Byrne) and mother Margaret (Helena Bonham Carter) - send her off to a boarding school but she runs away and takes up with Peadar (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo), a musician with a car. He's an underdeveloped character, essentially a plot contrivance to complicate things between Nicholas and Isabel, but he's not a cardboard cad. Williams and experienced director Polly Steele (Let Me Go) do a fair job of juggling the moves between time and place but sometimes important elements - like a painting by William that plays a crucial role - aren't dealt with as clearly or skilfully as they should be. As mentioned, it takes a long time for Nicholas and Isabel to meet, after a near miss or two, and their falling in love feels rather too rushed and underplayed. Not that the full gushing Hollywood treatment was needed but the handling seems clumsy. The way Nicholas is kept around for story purposes isn't entirely convincing either. There's an air of muted fatalism about things: people don't seem to get too passionate or upset. The film benefits from a fine cast. O'Shea was very likeable in the heartwarming boarding-school drama Handsome Devil (in which he starred with Nicholas Galitzine) and, playing a fairly subdued character here, is a sympathetic hero throughout. Skelly is also very good: you hope things will end well for them. Brosnan seems slightly odd casting as a scruffy bohemian but he and the other veterans are good to have around. Romantic dramas can end happily or tragically, hopefully or bittersweetly: without spoiling the film, the ending doesn't seem entirely clear, which is a little frustrating. But the painting, when finally viewed, does have some impact. It, like the film, could have had more.
Sydney Morning Herald
2 days 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
2 days 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
18-07-2025
- 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.
