Book adaptations are seldom successful and so it is with FOUR LETTERS OF LOVE, although there is much to admire in the film, written by the author himself, Niall Williams.
Convoluted plotting, the wildest chance and outrageous coincidence fit like measured clogs into the vast wheel of the novel, but somehow comes unstuck in this screen version despite the presence of Pierce Brosnan, Gabriel Byrne and Helena Bonham Carter.
Dublin 1971 and Nicholas Coughlan is set to sit his last year of school when his civil servant father, William, decides to up stumps and become a painter, travelling to the west coast leaving his son and wife.
On an island off the west coast, lives Isabel Gore with her parents and brother Sean, whose woodwind musical gift has been silenced by a sudden seizure.
Drawn together by circumstance and geography, these two families, and Isabel and Nicholas in particular, intertwine in a tale of destiny, acceptance, tragedy and the possibility of miracles.
Pierce Brosnan is fairly subdued as the sartorial conservative civil servant turned scruffy scumbler who only manages to paint one piece, a prophetic portrait of a future that comes to fruition.
Gabriel Byrne is cuddly soft and gorgeously subtle in the supple portrayal of Isabel’s school teacher father who is known as the town poet laureate.
And Helena Bonham Carter is brilliant as Isabel’s mother, Margaret, strong, supportive, a pillar of the family, yet with a cautionary contradictory streak.
Ann Skelly as Isabel is a certified scene stealer, a firecracker performance of rich and earthy tones.
Directed by Polly Steele in a rather pedestrian manner, the poetic sweep of Niall Williams’ novel becomes somewhat stilted, but for incurable soap romantics, and the considerable star power of Brosnan, Bonham Carter and Byrne, FOUR LETTERS OF LOVE may just pass muster.
