I caught Neil Jordan’s Ondine at the Toronto Int.Film Festival last September, and the first after-thought I had was, this’ll be a tough sell. Not that the fabric of the film is off-putting — you have your male lead in Colin Farrell, that I think people are generally interested in watching, but then you have a Sigur Ros singing mermaid, a divorced parent subplot with a spirited child years beyond her age stuck in a wheel chair (there is a resemblance to Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo) and you have antagonistic forces in the presence of a pair of thugs plotting their presence in a picturesque village that awkwardly don’t measure up. Not even Christopher Doyle’s lensing can chip away at the film’s uneven tone: at times you’d think this is strictly child’s play but then you’re reminded that this for the adults: Alicja Bachleda plays the modern day mermaid who is truly thankful for her studly savior.
Movieline got the scoop that Magnolia has grabbed the pic, for an eventual release this year. Written by Jordan, this tells the story of a fisherman played by Colin Farrell) in southwest Ireland who hauls up a live girl (Alicja Bachleda) in his nets. Ondine is a mythological sea nymph, and theories about the girl’s origins blossom as she transforms the lives of the fisherman and local townsfolk.