John Sayles tries to extend his famous feel for common folk to post-WWII Ireland, Land of the Twee, in a twinkly tale of Celtic quaintness and preciosity -- a tale of the sea, the old ways, the family. A very engaging young blond girl, after the death of her mother, goes to stay with "the older people" -- i.e., her grandparents -- and delves into the mysteries of Roan Inish, Island of the Seals; communes with one seal in particular (shades of Andre); and probes the fresh legend of her wee brother Jamie, who floated out to sea one day in his wooden shoe of a cradle. For all the authentic locales and faces, the thing stoutly refuses to come to life, flattened down in great part by the stilted, bookish, folksy dialogue: "Love of the sea's a sickness, and you two'll come to grief for it"; "The sea gives and the sea takes away"; "What the sea will take, the sea must have"; and so forth. Flattened down even more by Sayles's utter lack of feel for fantasy (cf. The Brother from Another Planet), irrespective of his feel for the common folk. Jeni Courtney, Eileen Colgan, Mick Lally, Richard Sheridan. (1995) — Duncan Shepherd
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