Cosmic love
Four Letters of Love is the film adaptation of Niall Williams’ (a speaker at this year’s Adelaide Writers Week) 1997 bestselling novel of the same name. It is about the power of love and the cosmos bringing love together. In a world of uncertainty, a feel-good love story now and then is a welcome thing.
Set in 1971, the film is narrated by a retrospective older Nicholas (Fionn O’Shea) who describes how his civil servant father William (Pierce Brosnan) believed that he had received a message from God to quit his job and become a painter. William leaves teenage Nicholas and his mother, Bette (Imelda May), in Dublin to follow his calling to paint in the west coast of Ireland.
The film shifts to an island on the west coast of Ireland where Isabel (Ann Skelly) is enjoying the last days before she is going to leave to attend convent school on the mainland, when her brother Sean (Dónal Finn) is struck ill. With her brother still ill, Isabel prepares to leave with her mother Margaret (Helena Bonham Carter) and poet father Muiris (Gabriel Byrne) sad with her departure. The film follows the separate paths of Nicholas and Isabel as they contend with the tribulations of their young lives in the midst of signs from the cosmos that lead to their fated paths crossing.
Director Polly Steele, takes great advantage of the beautiful Irish land and seascapes especially in the island, making the film almost a travel ad for the Irish west coast. Niall Williams adapts his novel as the script writer resulting in, at times, the plot becoming a little pretentious and at other times a little saccharine.
The cast is stellar, Helena Bonham Carter as Margaret performs the role at her usual first-rate level. Pierce Brosnan and Gabriel Byrne, both now in their seventies, are still fine actors. Additionally, the younger actors, Fionn O’Shea and Ann Skelly are both excellent in their pivotal roles.
Four Letters of Love is a sentimental story that travels different paths influenced by cosmic forces until they eventually cross, but a misty-eyed romantic story is not a bad thing sometimes.
Reviewed by Rob McKinnon
