Ondine (2009)
Average Rating: 6.3/10
Reviews Counted: 94
Fresh: 66 | Rotten: 28
Flawed but charming, Ondine reaffirms writer-director Neil Jordan's gift for myth, magic, and wonder.
Average Rating: 6.1/10
Critic Reviews: 24
Fresh: 16 | Rotten: 8
Flawed but charming, Ondine reaffirms writer-director Neil Jordan's gift for myth, magic, and wonder.
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Average Rating: 3.3/5
User Ratings: 19,710
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Movie Info
A man makes a startling discovery that may or may not be magical in this drama from writer and director Neil Jordan. Syracuse (Colin Farrell) is a fisherman who lives in a small town on the Southern coast of Ireland. Syracuse is an alcoholic, and though he's been sober for two years, most of his neighbors still remember him as a embarrassing drunk, while his ex-wife now lives with another man. Syracuse tries to scratch out a living from the ocean and help support his young daughter, Annie
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Cast
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Colin Farrell
Syracuse -
Alicja Bachleda
Ondine -
Alison Barry
Annie -
Stephen Rea
Priest -
Dervla Kirwan
Maura -
Tony Curran
Alex -
Emil Hostina
Vladic
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Ondine Trailer & Photos
All Critics (95) | Top Critics (24) | Fresh (67) | Rotten (28) | DVD (3)
It's impossibly romantic; Farrell and real-life partner Bachleda exude a tamped-down longing that intensifies as the movie draws to its conclusion.
Top CriticSome complexities of story will be lost on audiences not tuned to the regional Irish brogue that is the mother tongue of this little fishing community. But Christopher Doyle's dark lush photography plucks the green coast of Cork like a harp.
Among the film's pleasures is a disarmingly tender performance from the new, improved Colin Farrell.
Silkies aren't the only creatures who can inhabit two worlds. As Annie knows, and as Jordan's film makes clear, stories enable us to step outside the quotidian world and dream, if only for an hour or two.
Jordan starts to tell an intriguing tale about living with fantasy but falls back on plot turns cued to the flashing lights of cops and paramedics.
A lyrical, if slight, breeze of an Irish fable.
An Irish selkie tale for adults.
Understated in its subversion of, and then canny adherence to, its chosen folklore
A fairy tale for adults from Neil Jordan
Jordan has a gift for presenting fairy tales that somehow manage to be rooted in a very gritty real world. He makes us believe in the possibility of something we know to be impossible.
full review at Movies for the Masses
He's an Irishman, she's a seal. It'll never work.
An imperfect film, but it's the kind of imperfect film with staying power.
Ondine works OK when it's trying to be a romantic fantasy. Screenwriter/director Neil Jordan can't leave well enough alone, though. His fable suddenly turns dark and nasty in the final third, when it becomes a thriller.
At its most affecting, this uneven quasi-fantasy is about people hungering for myth
Hard to swallow fish tale.
Ondine is one of those lovely things that dissolves beneath too intent a gaze.
Before we're bogged down in melodrama, we float along as if we're passengers on Syracuse's boat, enjoying the superb performances and the slow rocking rhythm rolling out the love story.
Irish writer-director Neil Jordan will always be best remembered for The Crying Game and its penile plot twist, but there's infinitely more to his filmography than surprise shemales.
Fantastical Neil Jordan drama sees Colin Farrell's best performance yet
Ondine works best when it stays in the dreamy realm of enchantment...
Has such a breezy, playful sense of despair about it... The appeal is very much its delicacy, both as magical realism love story and bleak story of broken people in a run-down community.
Curiously, Jordan isn't sure what kind of mermaid movie to make.
Audience Reviews for Ondine
Super Reviewer
Super Reviewer
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- Priest: Misery is easy. Happiness you have to work at.
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- Syracuse: She sings to the fishes and he catches them.
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June 4, 2010:
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Foreign Titles
- OndineOndine - Das Mädchen aus dem Meer (DE)
The film's "feel" is a bit darker than I expected, making the injections of wry Irish humor in Colin's confessions to the priest (played by Stephen Rea) even more enjoyable. The script keeps you wondering until very near the end, "Is this really a modern fairy tale, or is there a more earthly explanation?"