QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM MALTA
The year is 1971. The action takes place somewhere on the Western coast of Ireland, not far from Galway. The landscape is complete with complete with craggy cliffs, winding countryside roads and dismal weather. There is not a television or a telephone at sight. It feels like these people are disconnected from the rest of the planet, living in a very distant past, or inside an imaginary bubble.
Isabel (Ann Skelly) lives with her father Muiris Gore (Gabriel Byrne), her mother Margaret (Helena Bonham-Carter) and her brother Seanie (Donal Finn). One day, Seanie inexplicably collapses while playing the pipe for his frollicking sister. He becomes severely disabled. Their father sends Isabel to an oppressive girls’s school (perhaps a Magdalene laundry?), but the charming and excitable young woman soon runs away, with a little hand of a young musician. She falls in and out of love, and the prospect of a marriage becomes a daunting one. Parallel to this, Nick (Fionn O’Shea) lives with his father William Coughlan (Pierce Brosnan) and his mother. After seeing a square light shining on a piece of paper, William gives up his office job and becomes a painter (the shape of the light is presumably a godly representation of a painting, and a divine call to action). Tragedy strikes multiple times, and a orphaned Nick travels to the Gores (whom he’s never met) in order to retrieve an elusive water-based painting made by his late father.
Most of the film is spoken in English, with the occasional Irish sentence thrown in for extra flavour.
If it wasn’t for the synopsis and the logline revealing that is a film about two people destined to meet, you would never guess that Isabel and Nick would fall in love. The movie allows no time for them to develop their relationship, and there is so chemistry whatsoever between the two actors – perhaps that’s because they barely interact. A fixation with the nature of painting and literature – the titular letters fulfil a purpose I could hardly understand – make the story even more bizarre and cryptic. Pearls of philosophical knowledge such as “”there’s no such a thing as fate, things just happen to0 us” purport to ponder on the meaning of life. The art piece left by William has a prophetic meaning that’s only revealed in the film’s final scene. The outcome is silly and preposterous.
The plot of Four Letters of Love is so complicated that’s impossible to summarise in a film review. And it’s often incomprehensible. This is what happens when you try to pack a 368-page romance into a film lasting less than two hours. There is enough material here for a television series or even a soap opera lasting six months to a year. The fact that the author of the eponymous best-selling novel is also the writer of the screen adaptation does not serve the events from banalisation. There’s so much happening here that it’s both impossible and undesirable to follow the turns. Every single scene contains a major development. It feels repetitive and trite.
This is a m0vie that relies strongly on its top-drawer cast in order to attract audiences. The film poster showcases Brosnan, Bonham-Carter and Byrne, while conveniently forgetting that O’Shea and Skelly are the actual protagonists (the latter is indeed memorable, with a heartfelt performance outshining all the others). An ethereal music score, with angelical choir voices and Enya-esque vibes, adds yet another layer of celestial boredom to the story.
Ultimately, this is a very stiff and solemn movie, one with an overconfidence in its storytelling abilities, an inflated sense of spirituality, and entirely devoid of humour, irony and self-deprecation.
Fours Letters of Love showed in the 3rd Mediterrane Film Festival, in Malta. In cinemas on Friday, July 18th.
