A tale of Irish clerical corruption told by Englishmen; a rage-fuelled howl muffled by a tea-cosy; a tragic examination of faith and shame presented as a generic odd-couple tale. Stephen Frears’ Philomena is an odd beast, which explicitly belittles “human interest” stories, what with their manipulative, exploitative, tear-jerker angles. Instead, this true story of an elderly Magdalene survivor searching for her estranged son deliberately undersells its emotion, packing in crowd-pleasing laughs. The result is a hugely important story reduced to a warm, slight and occasionally dull film.
Judi Dench shines as naïve chatterbox Philomena Lee, while Steve Coogan is wonderfully dry and cynical as real-life journalist Martin Sixsmith, who’s investigating Philomena’s story. And what a harrowing story, featuring isolation and abuse, Catholic guilt, sexual shame, baby trading, lost relationships and grieving mothers struggling to keep their faith.
However Coogan and Jeff Pope’s screenplay determinedly finds humour in places both strange and familiar, playing up the odd-couple dynamic. This works wonderfully and warmly in the first-half as the characters get used to one another, with Martin’s cynical one-liners and Philomena’s innocent non-sequiturs proving delightful. Dench in particular beautifully explores an intriguing spectrum of chirpiness, shame, cheekiness and grief, while her flashbacks, shot on strikingly grainy Super 16, provide further context.
But the humour does begin to feel like a cheap defence mechanism, undermining emotional scenes. The proportion of condescending jokes at the expense of the unsophisticated “little old Irish lady” (always “Irish lady”) also feel unfair, and culturally disconnected from the horrors of the subject matter.
The tonal jar is keenly felt in Alexandre Desplat’s appallingly bad score; a cheap blend of television drama arpeggios and Oirish notes. Though overbearingly weighted, it fails to compensate for the sluggish, anti-climactic pacing. That said, the final showdown is an emotionally mature victory. Funny, brilliantly acted but calculatedly gentle, Philomena will evoke a laugh, a cry - and maybe a shrug.