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Ireland, United States · 2009
Rated PG-13 · 1h 51m
Director Neil Jordan
Starring Colin Farrell, Alicja Bachleda-Curuś, Dervla Kirwan, Alison Barry
Genre Drama, Romance
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Fairy tales and real life collide with drastic consequences in this thrilling romance after a fisherman hauls a mysterious woman into his boat, believing her to be a mermaid. They fall passionately in love and their romance pulls the fisherman out of a depression, but the real world soon intercedes in their fairy-tale romance.
Jordan's screenplay aims for a romanticism that the beautiful but stiff Bachleda is unable to fulfill. And the ending, which injects the film's dreamy sensibility with an ugly note of realism, crashes over everything like a frigid wave.
Los Angeles Times by Betsy Sharkey
The road is rocky when the story speeds up to take care of business, with the end a mad dash to tie up loose ends. Still, there is enough saving grace on these craggy shores to let the mists and the legends roll in and envelop you for a while.
Mostly, though, Ondine deftly demonstrates just how far we'll reach for any promise of relief from life's hardships, in whatever form -- magic or plain dumb luck -- it arrives.
Funny, whimsical and as warming as a big bowl of Irish stew.
Ondine plumbs the country's most resonant fairy tale and plays impishly along the borders of postcard fantasies of Ireland.
Boxoffice Magazine by Pam Grady
Ondine is Injected with a heavy dose of magic and has a lot going for it: an endearing performance from star Colin Farrell, Christopher Doyle's evocative cinematography and a captivating-if thin-story.
Christian Science Monitor by Peter Rainer
This movie is a one-of-a-kind experience – blarney carried to rhapsodic heights.
Movieline by Stephanie Zacharek
Ondine suggests that coincidence and magic are often the same thing.
Philadelphia Inquirer by Steven Rea
Pretty magical.
Neil Jordan's Ondine has a split personality. It starts promisingly as a fantasy but ends disappointingly as a thriller.
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