Ondine
Making one of his periodic returns to shoot in Ireland, this time to the fishing village of Castletownbere on the rugged Beara peninsula in the Southwest, Jordan here examines ideas related to luck, destiny, the distinction between physical and moral rehabilitation, the advantages of being willing to believe in good fortune, the value of storytelling, and the light and dark sides of fairy tales and life. Some of it is fanciful and some harsh, resulting in a deliberate collision of moods that defines the picture's personality.
"Anything strange or wonderful?" the scrappy fisherman named Syracuse (Colin Farrell) inquires of his 10-year-old daughter upon greeting her, and the two adjectives more or less describe everything that happens in this yarn, beginning with the opening, in which Syracuse raises his fishing net from the bay to find within it a young woman who, unaccountably, is alive. Although fearful she could be an asylum seeker, he prefers to imagine otherwise, that she's Ondine, "the girl who came from the water," a sign that his run of rotten luck is at an end and he may now look forward to seven years of good fortune.
– Todd McCarthy, Variety
Duration: 111 min
Dialogue: English, Romanian
Age limit: K15
