Ondine

Ondine, a lush, dreamy film from Neil Jordan, is an okay film--nothing great, but not a bummer, either. But I can't help but leading off with a pet peeve of mine. Attention, studios: if you are issuing an Irish film on DVD, please use subtitles! I doubt I understood half of the dialogue in this film.

What I did understand was this: a fisherman, named Syracuse (Colin Farrell) but called Circus because he's something of a clown (and not because he's funny) hauls up his net and finds a beautiful woman in it. He revives her, and she is mysterious and does not want to be seen by anyone. He hides her in his mother's old house.

Farrell has a daughter who is gravely ill, and he tells her about the woman, but frames it as a fairy tale. The daughter (Alison Barry) concludes that she must be a selkie, a creature from Celtic mythology that is a seal that turns into a human. Suspicious, she goes to her hiding place and finds her, and they become close.

Eventually the woman, who calls herself Ondine, comes out of hiding, but that brings out a man who is looking for her. Barry thinks it must be another selkie, but Ondine's origins turn out to be much more prosaic, in an ending that kind of lets the air out of what had occurred earlier in the film.

As with almost every film set in Ireland, it's beautiful to look at. The photography of the seacoast in the County of Cork is by Christopher Doyle, and it's magnificent. Farrell is very engaging as the fisherman, and Alicja Bachleda is properly enigmatic in the title role. I do wonder about Jordan's inspiration for this film--what man wouldn't want to pull a woman who looks like a fashion model straight out of the sea?