The Miracle

Written and directed by Neil Jordan (The Company of Wolves, Mona Lisa, We're No Angels), the mistitled The Miracle gets off to a winning start, as we're introduced to a pair of teenage misfits named Jimmy (Niall Byrne) and Rose (Lorraine Pilkington) whose miserable family lives have driven them to create their own worlds. Basically, Jimmy and Rose walk the streets of a small Irish village trying to guess what the people they observe are really like, concocting elaborate and fanciful life stories for these folk as a way of compensating for their own drab, mundane existence. When they come across a woman in her 40s on the beach, who may be French, or may be American, but is certainly cloaked in mystery by Jimmy and Rose's standards, Jimmy becomes obsessed. He follows the woman to Dublin where he sees her in a paltry musical production of "Destry Rides Again." The two strike up an acquaintance, and Jimmy begins an active romantic pursuit of Miss Rene Baker (Beverly D'Angelo). His new love interest leads to a clash with his alcoholic father Sam (Donal McCann), who forbids Jimmy to see Miss Baker. Unfortunately, the audience has already been let in on the fact that Miss Baker is actually Jimmy's supposedly "dead" mother early on, and must wait for three-fourths of the movie for Jimmy to make the connection. Although visually interesting (with images inspired by Jordan's own writing amore, novelist Angela Carter), The Miracle begins to seriously drag by the second half, and winds up more than a little confused about itself during the final reel. The ending, involving an elephant in a church, is a bit removed from the evenhanded realism established during the first half. While there is much to appreciate here--both visually and in the excellent debut acting turns of Byrne and Pilkington--The Miracle is ultimately a disappointingly skewed love story from a writer-director who is capable of much better. Not a necessary purchase. (R. Pitman)