Syraceuse (Colin Farrell, excellent) is a lonely, painfully single fisherman who lives for his special needs daughter when, out on a morning’s trawl, he catches a woman (Alicja Bachleda) in his net. Might she be a mermaid? Or a selkie? Our hero’s daughter Annie certainly seems to think so. Her fairytale is tempered, however, by gritty circumstance; mommy (Dervla Kirwin) is a bitter, self-absorbed drunk and a sinister stranger is watching from afar.
Ondine the mythological water nymph has inspired at least three major operas (including the Tchaikovsky one), movements by Ravel and Debussy and given her name to a prehistoric German fish. We should not be surprised that director Neil Jordan, an old master of archetypes and legends, has finally turned his attentions to the fish-tailed lady.
Together with DOP Chris Doyle, Mr. Jordan finds poetry in the grey skies and murky waters off the Cork coast. The fable may be slight – a doodle when placed beside the pomp of Company of Wolves or the diseased fancies of The Butcher Boy – but it never looks anything less than epic.