天涯海角

A tender-hearted Irish folklore from American indie maverick John Sayles, THE SECRET OF ROAN INISH proselytizes and reminisces an eco-friendly co-existence between human and nature, set in 1946, our young heroine is Fiona Coneelly (Courtney), who is sent to live with her grandparents in a seaside Irish village after the passing away of her mother.

There, overlooking the tiny island called Roan Inish (“seal island” in Irish), where the Coneelly family lived for generations until only few years ago, Fiona is captivated by it and, to a lesser extent, by the local seal population that lives peacefully with the villagers.

Accompanied by her grandpa Hugh (Lally) and cousin Eamon (Sheridan), Fiona visits the family’s deserted dwellings on the island, and once, floating to the island alone on a fish boat (an action numinously facilitated by the seals), she espy a tyke larking around, who might be her younger brother Jamie (Bryne), who was an infant baby and carried away by the current in his cradle boat during the day of the family’s evacuation, causing great distress for the family.

Also the family’s legendary history of one of their ancestors marries a Selkie (seal woman) is reinforced in the heart of Fiona, through her communication with a distant cousin Tadhg (John Lynch), who is dark-haired and sea-loving - attributes inherited through Selkie’s blood, and whose kind appears in the family lineage from time to time, and Fiona believes Jamie is also that kind, rescued and reared by seals, the only way to find him back is to lure her grandparents back to the island, to convince the seals that the family is back and Jamie can be returned to the safe hands again.

Sayle’s script opts for a simplistic approach that is more in line with a child’s bedtime story, and his Fiona’s point-of-view (Courtney is a cute moppet if acting might be too much a stretch for her) makes sure that it is a perfectly innocuous family fare that the whole family can enjoy magnificently. The only hurdle to a requisite happy ending is that Fiona must convince her grandparents that her seeing Jamie on the island is anything but a kid’s daydreaming, and it only takes a sage grandma (Colgan) to overcome that, ironically, she is the one who everyone supposedly should treat with kid gloves on that particular subject matter. Colgan is a sturdy embodiment of down-home benevolence and Lally, plays her husband, is incredibly avuncular, whose mellow timbre can leaven lengthy recount and whose Alec Guinness-looklike carriage is endearing to watch.

For shizzle, Celtic tuneage is mellifluously laid on with a trowel and the locality’s unique misty, muted visuals are captured by Haskell Wexler with an aroma of animism, in particular, the surreal Selkie-sloughing scene (the Selkie is played by Susan Lynch, John’s little sister), and the ones with well-trained seals, are quite an eyeful.

referential entries: Tomm Moore’s SONG OF THE SEA (2014, 7.6/10); Agnieszka Holland’s THE SECRET GARDEN (1993, 8.0/10).