Brooklyn Review

Brooklyn was one of my favorite films of the Sundance film festival. Nick Hornby (About a Boy, An Education) adapted the book for the screen, and I especially loved some very sharply written funny dialogue -- the boarding house dinners were an absolute stitch.

Saorise (which we learned is pronounce Ser-shay) Ronan stars as Elis, a young woman with little prospects in her town in Ireland in 1951. Her older sister has arranged through a priest in Brooklyn for her to immigrate with a job already waiting for her. She has a difficult crossing, and is taken under the wing of her roommate who has just been returning to Ireland for a family visit.

Elis lives in a boarding house with several other girls, but is crushed by loneliness and homesickness. She works as a shop girl in a high end department store. The priest, played by Jim Broadbent, arranges for her to start night school for bookkeeping.

Her life turns around when she meets Tony, a young Italian plumber, at a church dance. Tony is madly in love with her, and is like an incredibly sweet young Marlon Brando.

Tragedy strikes back at home and she has to return to Ireland. Tony is fearful that she will forget him and not return.

His fears are well founded, because both her family and friends do all they can to get her to stay. She meets a young man played beautifully by Domnhaill Gleason, and is truly torn both between the two young men, and her prospective life in both countries.

My husband didn't like the character of Elis when she returned to Ireland, and was angry with her for cheating on Tony. There was an audible gasp in the theater when you see that she has not even opened Tony's letters. A love triangle like this is the kind of story I read often, and I could sympathize with how torn she was between the two alternatives. She makes the right choice, but it is difficult and wrenching to do so.

I cried watching this film, and it affected me the strongest of any film I saw at the fest. I heard lots of sniffles all around me in the theater, too. It sold immediately the next day, and is already being talked about for next year's awards season. The performances are particularly strong, especially Saorise Ronan who can convey her inner turmoil with the slightest of changes of expression. I have never seen Emory Cohen's (Tony) work before, and I will definitely be watching out for him in the future. I was pleased to see Domnhaill Gleason get a more serious, and less silly role than most of the other films I have seen him do. He was great, and a formidable alternative to Tony. Julie Waters was a RIOT as the strict landlady of the girls' boarding house, and gets some of the funniest lines of the script.