At
least the Irish nuns of Roscrea convent are not cannibals, but that is about
all they have going for them. In the early 1950’s, they took in “shamed” young
women, forcing them to serve five years of indentured servitude, even after
their children had been “sold” to adoptive parents. For decades, Philomena Lee had searched in
vain for her son Anthony, but she will finally get some answers when she teams
up with a disgraced Labour press flack slumming as tabloid freelancer. Prepare to laugh a little, cry a little, and
learn a little bit about yourself with Stephen Frears’ shamelessly manipulative
Philomena (trailer here), which opens
tomorrow in New York.
A
few hours after finally learning she could have a half brother out there, Lee’s
daughter pitches her story to Martin Sixsmith.
Hung out to dry by the Labour Party over some petty kerfuffle, he is
looking to grind out a few human interest pieces. As an Oxford educated hipster atheist, he
instinctively looks down on the simple, devout Lee. However, he recognizes the elements of a
juicy tear-jerking expose.
With
his new scandal sheet picking up the tab, Sixsmith follows Anthony’s trail from
Ireland to America, with Lee in tow.
Yet, a few phone calls and an internet search in the airport are all
Sixsmith really needs to crack the case.
Renamed Michael Hess by his parents, Lee’s Anthony became a high-ranking
insider in the Reagan and H.W. Bush administrations. He was also a closeted gay man, who
tragically died of AIDS. It turns out it
isn’t just the nuns who are meanies. Republicans are not very nice either,
because they did not indiscriminately shovel our cash at AIDS causes.
Steve
Coogan and Jeff Pope’s screen adaptation of Sixsmith’s book is so preoccupied
with score-settling, it is frankly rather embarrassing, like that obnoxious
relative at Thanksgiving dinner who insists on revisiting each and every
perceived slight. If truth be told, they share Sixsmith’s initial contempt of
Lee, portraying her as a tacky rube, devouring trashy romance novels and
desperately clinging to her blind Catholic faith, despite all the dirtiness
done unto her by the Sisters. Lee
deserves better than she gets from Dame Judi Dench shticky Oscar trolling performance. Even when Dench’s Lee offers her unsolicited
forgiveness to the nasty old nun most responsible for Roscrea’s problematic
past, what should have been a heavy moment is reduced to a few trite exchanges.
