Ondine

At the close of a dreary day, as a lonely Irish fisherman reels in his nets, he spies a choking and sputtering woman, barely alive. And so begins writer-director Neil Jordan's charming fable, set in the village of Castletownbere in County Cork. The fisherman—hardworking Syracuse (Colin Farrell)—is a down-on-his-luck recovering alcoholic who dotes on his disabled 10-year-old daughter, Annie (Alison Barry), taking her for weekly dialysis while she awaits a kidney transplant. Annie, who lives with her hard-drinking mum (Dervla Kirwan) and her mother's boyfriend (Tony Curran), is intrigued by “the girl who came from the water,” who calls herself Ondine (Alicja Bachleda), after the legendary sprite. Ondine could be an asylum-seeker or, as Annie suspects, a “selkie”—i.e., a folkloric creature who periodically emerges from the sea and falls in love with a mortal before returning to the briny deep. Syracuse sequesters Ondine in his late mother's seaside cottage, much to the consternation of the local priest (Stephen Rea). Ondine sings when she accompanies Syracuse on his boat, after which—inexplicably—lobsters abound and the nets are full of salmon. But a mysterious stranger (Emil Hostina) eventually arrives, threatening Ondine's peace and tranquility. Nicely augmenting Jordan's fanciful, bittersweet tale are Christopher Doyle's luminescent cinematography and the music of Kjartan Sveinsson, of the Icelandic band Sigur Rós. Recommended. (S. Granger)