But alas and alack, it was not to be. I sorta liked it but it did not engage me as a film ought to. I loved the scenery, music and the cinematography but the script, that was another story. And the cliches were so abundant they just about took over the movie. This is an Ireland dumbed down for the foreign revenue no doubt. There is no other way of explaining it. A black kid arrives on a remote island off the coast and is soon assimilated into the locale and treated as one of the islanders. Not in the Ireland I know where they are still trying to deal with the prejudice around foreign adoptions. Non-white kids in Ireland are ignored on the whole or talked about and around as if they are invisible - a problem that should go away. Nuns in wimples disappeared in the seventies and if a few lingered on they were on the heads of some ancients, not on the young nuns portrayed here. And there was a huge plot hole in the fact that the postman, known and loved by all would not deliver key mail to a major player or at the very least show curiosity about important mail from a banished lover to a pub owner. And the mawky and sentimental resolution at the end,oh dear, I have seen better Ballykissangel episodes. Sigh. This is an Ireland of leprachauns and wishful thinking. 6 out of 10 for the great cast who tried to rise above the abysmal material they were dealt and dig for some meaning in their characters. The late great Donal McCann was a knockout as was Sinead Cusack.
Review of The Nephew
