In Irish Gaelic. 95 minute running time so an excellent length. Irish Gaelic is an awful language to listen to, sort of like Hebrew or Arabic or some Middle Earth elven tongue, just hard on the ear … this is a tearjerker with well-timed heartstring music to match, so you’re going to be balling like a baby at the end … I have seen so many Tár-ible movies of late that this sensitive, though heavy-handed, movie was surprisingly good … it’s a simple story, too simple of course, the power of love (and silence), “no secrets in this house,” etc., but it was well told.
The little girl is beautiful. The Irish countryside is beautiful (never rains once, but everything is green). The summertime “mother” is beautiful … she looks like she stepped out of the pages of a Ralph Lifshitz WASP fantasy catalog … tall, thin, stylish, so kind, so patient, so understanding … meanwhile the little girl’s bastard Da is screwing all the local women behind his old lady’s back and gambling away the family’s seed corn. Yeah, it was that heavy-handed. But I liked it. Sad that I have to give this a green-go, but that’s what it has come to. John Farr liked it too.
