Brooklyn

With emigration, and the choices it inevitably forces people to make, dominating the news on a daily basis, this adaptation of Colm Tóibín’s novel of the same name is perhaps particularly timely. The film tells the story of one young woman’s search for a better life many miles from home. Eilis Lacey, played by Saoirse Ronan (rather appositely the name means “freedom” in Irish) leaves her home in a quiet backwater of County Wexford to travel to Brooklyn. There she quickly finds a job, a place to live in a boarding-house, and a new boyfriend – Tony Fiorello (played by Emory Cohen). Despite being beset by crippling homesickness, she starts to carve out a new life for herself.

Then, following the death of her sister, Eilis returns home to attend her friend’s wedding. While back in the Emerald Isle she soon becomes involved with about-to-make-good local boy Jim and finds herself torn between whether to stay in her beloved Ireland with her lonely widowed mother or continue to pursue her new life with her husband. What happens next I found a little unconvincing. Having made so much of Eilis and Tony’s burgeoning love, subsequent passionate consummation and marriage, I found it hard to believe in her sudden misgivings at this point. She seems to switch her affection with alarming ease from smouldering Italian Tony (with just the tiniest hint of a young Marlon Brando about him?) to solid, home-grown Jim with his promising ‘prospects’.

Then, just as it seems that Eilis’s Irish roots will pull her back home for good, she is summoned one day to her former boss (the only bad person in the whole film!) and subjected to veiled threats that her ‘secret’, i.e. marrying Tony before setting sail for home, was out. I sat up at this point, pleased at this injection of (albeit mild) jeopardy – maybe a blackmail plot was emerging…. But no, the scene turns out to be merely a narrative device to prompt Eilis’s decision to return. She realises she doesn’t want to stay in this socially constricting world of “sternly jacketed women and oily-haired blazer boys”, but is drawn instead to the vibrant, brightly-coloured world that beckons to her across the pond.

My verdict on Brooklyn? I thought Saoise acted her part well, though I am not convinced she is “one of the most intelligent and compelling screen presences of her generation” (Observer film critic, Mark Kermode). The period detail was excellent and I loved some of the set-piece scenes, such as her meeting with Tony’s parents - featuring a superb comic cameo from youngster James DiGiacomo - and the scenes played out around the all-female boarding house dinner table. Julie Walters is well cast as the shrewish, but kind-hearted matriarch Mrs Kehoe - solicitous of her girls but refusing to stand for what she regards as inappropriate talk or behaviour. Fiona Glascott also provides a stand-out performance as Eilis’s sister Rose.

Yet despite some really good acting and an excellent scene offering an (all too brief) insight into the lot of Irish expat men in the US, I felt this was otherwise a pretty standard ‘follow your dreams’ movie. It also occasionally verges on saccharine, particularly in the less strong second half of the film. The critics, however, love it. The Observer’s Mark Kermode describes it as having a “deceptively low-key charm”, whilst the Telegraph judges it to be “pulse-quickeningly good”, able to “send[s] a shiver down your spine”. Mmm, it didn’t quite do that for me… though I suspect many Americans - particularly those among the estimated 39 million who claim to be of Irish descent - will absolutely love this story!

Take a look at the official trailer: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/brooklyn/review/