Ondine (2009)

Let's be realistic.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

I've always been a great admirer of writer/director Neil Jordan and consider him to be one of the greatest storytellers in the world of cinema. "Ondine" is one of my favorite movies of his, simply because it more or less represents a return to his roots and his devotion for fantasy/fairy-tale movies. Of course he will never make another masterpiece like "The Company of Wolves", but I very much prefer his fantasy films over the more mainstream and Hollywoodesque titles like "The Brave One" or "The Good Thief". Okay, so admittedly I'm a bit biased, but everything about "Ondine" feels right straight from the beginning. Beautiful images of the Irish Sea and coast side, enchanting music, a moody atmosphere and the immediate introduction of melancholic and deeply convoluted main characters. This film also finally offers native Irishman Colin Farrell the opportunity to depict the protagonist he was born to depict! Syracuse – nicknamed Circus because he used to behave like a clown when he was still a drunkard – is an independent fisherman on the verge of poverty, continuously in dispute with his alcoholic ex-wife and only trying to remain on the right path out of love for his severely ill daughter Annie. During the opening sequences of the film already, Syracuse drags his fishing nets back aboard of his boat and is astonished to find a beautiful girl caught in them. She calls herself Ondine and insists that only Syracuse knows of her existence. He shelters her in his deceased mother's coastal shed and doesn't mind keeping her around because all of a sudden his fisherman's nets are now miraculously full of thick juicy lobsters and rare quality salmons. When Annie finds out about Ondine, the little girl is convinced that she's a Selkie; a folklore mermaid-creature that can only remain on land if she marries a landsman and buries her seal coat. For the vast majority of its running time "Ondine" is a truly marvelous fantasy adventure with a dreamy atmosphere and identifiable characters. Unfortunately the climax is a bit disappointing, because Neil Jordan found it necessary to give a rational explanation at the end after all. I, for one, would have been perfectly satisfied if the plot remained mysterious and fantastic. "Ondine" is brought to an even higher quality-level thanks to the mesmerizing music of the awesome Icelandic band Sigur Rós (YouTube them in case you don't know their music!) and stellar performances from the entire ensemble cast. Colin Farrell is terrific, as stated already, but also the young girl Alison Barry impresses as Syracuse's daughter and Dervla Kirwan is brilliant as his loathsome and possessive ex- wife. Neil Jordan regular Stephen Rea appears as the priest where Syracuse goes to confess and – last but not least – there's the Polish actress Alicja Bachleda as the titular Ondine. She's a good actress and definitely one of the most ravishing beings – mermaid, human or otherwise – on this planet. I certainly don't blame Colin Farrell that he kept her close to him even long after the film was finalized

The Irish setting and the 'selkie' were the impressive stars of this film. Thankfully, I had closed captions to comprehend the script due to light volume and heavy accents. It was a lovely composition of sea, fantasy, beauty, with limited melodrama. I was unaware of this myth and was intrigued to see this concept developed with unexpected plot twists.Colin is a favorite actor and can overcome many questionable elements that compromise a quality film. I found the chemistry between Syra and Ondine quiet and reserved but extremely stirring. How could they curtail the interactions most expected from your typical Hollywood production? Certainly to Colin's chagrin and audience members! Many times when life turns on a dime it's actually a positive direction and correlated to meeting that one person who makes all the difference, albeit with subtlety. The hope and faith that collapses over time is transformed to a shining bright star and breathtaking to witness. Art mimics life and this film is a delight for confirmation.High recommend for Ireland sea landscape exposition and the 'selkie' fantasy extrapolation.

"That's what I deal with—that meeting place between fairy tale and real life." - Neil Jordan Neil Jordan directs "The Good Thief". The film stars Nick Nolte as Bob, an ex convict, addict, thief and full time drunk. Speaking in slurred speech and bumbling about Southern France like a grizzly bear with a hangover, Bob spends most of his time doing good deeds for down on their luck women, taking young thieves under his wing or chatting to local police, most of whom enjoy his company despite his criminal past. He's quite literally a good thief, liked by all. The film was based on Melville's "Bob The Gambler", an influential "heist movie". Jordan's film is faithful to Melville's, whilst also staking out its own style and story.Like most of Jordan's films ("Company of Wolves", "Mona Lisa" etc), "Thief" attempts to collide a gritty crime-and-drugs plot with fairytale tropes. Nolte's part noir knight, part alcoholic on a downward slope to hell. When he attempts to pull off a dramatic casino heist, we're left at the edge of our seats, anxious to know whether fantasy wins out over the grunge. But the joke of the movie – the film sets up several possible resolutions then ends with a fairytale deus-ex machina - is in Jordan's delight in forcing us to recognise the romanticism in filth, and the grungy, seedy side of fairy tales. Noir/crime is largely a fantasy, and romantic idealism always has its sleazy flip-side.Beyond this, the film is preoccupied with doubles, replicas, doppelgangers and copies. There's a real heist and a fake heist, several twinned characters, authentics and surrogates, real paintings and fake copies, real rooms and fake mock-ups, double-crimes, double-bluffs, double crosses, two versions of every story and Jordan's usual fondness for transsexuals (muscular men with boobs and/or effeminate men) or those who undergo sex change operations, all of which again contribute to the blurring of all lines between original and copy. The germ of originality is always moving, just as Bob himself continually seems to rely on reinvention. While Melville's "Bob" was largely silent, stoic, and modelled on Sterling Hayden's role in "Asphalt Jungle", Jordan's Bob is both a fake and aware that he is a fake, continually recreating his past in order to get out of whatever fix he finds himself in. He also talks incessantly about thievery, numbers, probability theory, gambling, art etc, and idolises Pablo Picasso, who he regards, perversely, as the best thief that who lived. His prized possession is itself a Picasso, which he claims he won during a bet with the master."A film about remaking, reinvention, about the interplay between fakes and originals, became interesting to me," Jordan says, and in a way his film almost plays like a treatise on remakes. He even goes so far as to have Melville's heist literally play out as a "fake heist" within the film, which is used to distract the authorities, and audience, from the "real heist". This "real heist" then itself turns out to be a fake. The way the old, new and newer vie for attention, or even survival, is itself embodied by the cast, who like Bob (and Jordan) are all old, haggard and on the verge of retirement - a French detective Inspector, played warmly by Tcheky Karyo, is Bob's closest companion - or young, cocky and hungry for mischief. Bob survives, like Jordan and his film, because he knows how to adapt. Jordan acknowledges this autobiographical quality: "Bob eventually solves the problems inherent in the idea of a remake. He likes copies, replays, versions of versions, feints, old hands played in different ways. Even the Picasso he owns is revealed to be a double of the original, a fake. It's a good fake, though, Bob says. Painted by Keating, one of the truly great fakers." Today Paul Keatings are celebrated and sell for millions.Like Melville's film, indeed like all noirs, "Thief" is preoccupied with luck and a sort of existential indeterminism. Bob lives by the dice, but secretly dreams of the impossibly complicated heist, planned to aesthetically pleasing perfection. His artfully constructed plot fails, of course, but he is nevertheless rescued by a moment of cosmic luck (a reversal of "The Killing's" climax, again with heist maestro Sterling Hayden, released the same year as Melville's film).Not as good as "Thief" is Jordan's "Ondine", which stars Colin Farrell as an Irish fisherman who, like Bob, is a former drunk who finds himself plucking a woman, his own personal lady luck, out of darkness. He's convinced she's a mermaid and believes she can alter fortunes. Fairy tale tropes – a fisherman's love for and dependence upon a magical woman, and vice versa – and grungy, crime tropes then collide, Jordan revealing that the woman is really a drug mule, is evading gangsters and so forth. The "mermaid's" magical powers, her ability to control fate, is then revealed to be a sham. Events in the film which we perceived to be "magically" preordained are then revealed to be pure chance. This echoes the climax of "The Good Thief" in multiple ways. "Ondine" then ends with the couple living happily ever after despite a complete breakdown of their and our preconceptions; the girl isn't a magical, fairytale princess, but she's princessly despite her foibles, the fisherman isn't a hero, but is heroic despite his flaws. In each of these films, the realistic basis allows for the fairytale, and we're asked to recognise that fairy tales can't exist without something sleazy to be rescued from.Aesthetically, both films are special; hyper-moody, sensual, lots of night skies, eye-popping lights, or in the case of "Ondine", atmospheric Irish coastal towns, cold greys and cosy wool sweaters. "Thief" utilises odd jump-cuts, a nod to the French New Wave. Both films rely on mood, tone and place to make up for their weaknesses.7.9/10 - Worth one viewing.

Ondine had so much going for it: Neil Jordan, Colin Farrell, Stephen Rea, the southwest coast of Ireland, the selkie myth, the complexity of modern Ireland. But the film was surprisingly poor. It starts off very promising, and that promise is a film that offers an interesting mix of fairy tale and realism. But the mix gets muddled about halfway through, and the last twenty minutes are ridiculously poor. The scenery is beautiful. Colin Farrell at his most handsome. The soundtrack is lovely. But the acting, across the board, is mediocre -- primarily, I think, because the screenplay just doesn't hold up. But I also think the little girl is weak, and woman who plays Ondine is just vacuous, not mysterious. I forced myself to watch it a second time, just in case I just came to it with false expectations, and found it to be worse the second time around. Once you know the ending, you can see that the earlier scenes don't add up: they were "tricks" that the film plays on you.