Neil Jordan's
Ondine is a story about a down-on-his-luck fisherman
(Colin Farrell) in a small town on the coast of Ireland who
pulls up a near naked girl (Alicja Bachleda), the Ondine of
the title, in his net one day. It is a film fits the
mold of what I know (which is quite little and learned from
a bevy of fictional sources) about Ireland. The
characters are hard-scrabbled, salt-of-the-Earth workers
who've, regardless the hardship, accepted their lot in life.
The tone of the film fits the sort of muted emotional
resonance I think of when Ireland is mentioned in passing
conversation. Even the presence of a woman in a net,
saved from the waters by an all-too lucky fisherman, and the
town's grudging acceptance of her as either fabled Selkie (a
sort of Irish mermaid) or escaped criminal, squeezes in to
my knowledge of the Irish. Neil Jordan has done a fine
job of capturing this spirit in the film, imbuing the
fable-type ambience of the picture, with the sort of somber
mood that goes hand-in-hand with the Ireland of my mind.
Review - Ondine
Syracuse,
or Circus as he was deemed in his younger, drunker days, is
a now-sober fisherman who lives in the home of his deceased
gypsy mother and lives for only two things: fishing and his
daughter Annie. The movie starts with the long-haired
Syracuse pulling a near-hysterical woman from the water in
his nets. And that's the crux of the story: who is
this woman? Is she a Selkie? Is she an escaped
convict? Does she have magical powers? Or
perhaps this little town on the sea is just so thirsty for a
drink of something different, that this woman from the sea,
brings a more mundane sort of magic.
Like any good fable, the story isn't just about attractive
mermaids, but rather is about the effect of change on a life
a seemingly stalled. Farrell plays Circus with a sort
of world-weary grimace. The shit has been kicked out
of this sour-faced man and he wears it in the hard lines
between his nose and his hair. The appearance of
Ondine is a lightning bolt, a sort of deux ex machina that
changes everything: his fishing luck, his relationship with
his daughter and ex-wife, even his perception by the
clucking hens that populate the town. What Jordan does
well in the film is craft the idea that regardless of
Ondine's true nature (Selkie or asylum-seeker), her
appearance creates magic in itself. The town changes
because Ondine appears, and be it because she's magic or
because the town just needed something new, it doesn't
matter - the magic is created.
And thus, I can, in some ways forgive Jordan for not only
casting such a modelesque beauty for the role of Ondine
(c'mon, in every fantasy anyone has ever had, do we ever
imagine mermaids as unattractive?) but also spending such a
lavish amount of time focused on how attractive she is.
Jordan's camera lingers, to a distracting degree, on the
sumptuous curves of Bachleda's Ondine, and though it is
unnecessary at times, her glowing attraction highlights how
different she is from the inhabitants of this coastal town.
She seems more magic because she stands out so clearly.
At times though (one dress-changing scene in particular) it
seems as if Jordan is just leering for the sake of leering.
Ondine isn't a complicated film, as no fable should
be, nor is it a particularly brilliant one, but it
effectively balances a sense of magic and mystery, with the
salt-blown cheeks of an Ireland I barely know.
Noah Sanders is the blog/news editor at Light In The
Attic and a contributor at Sound On The Sound and
the KEXP blog. He also has his own
Criterion-based film site, Criterion Quest.
If you'd like to contact Noah in regards to his
writings here at Side One: Track One then please do
so
here.
- Noah Sanders
- -
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