Tag: forgiveness

THE MIRACLE CLUB – Review

Agnes O’Casey as Dolly, Kathy Bates as Eileen Dunne and Maggie Smith as Lily Fox sign up for the ‘All Stars Talent Show’ in THE MIRACLE CLUB. Photo credit: Jonathan Hession. © themiracleclubcopyright 2023. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

Maggie Smith and Kathy Bates play longtime friends in ’60s Ballygar, Ireland hoping to win a church talent contest for a pilgrimage to Lourdes, France, in Irish director Thaddeus O’Sullivan’s dramedy THE MIRACLE CLUB. Actually there are three friends, with the third being a young neighbor, played by Agnes O’Casey. The women have differing reason for wanting to make the pilgrimage – two hope for a miracle and one wants a trip of lifetime. There is a fourth woman is on the trip, Chrissie (Laura Linney), the long-absent daughter of a recently deceased friend, who has returned after four decades in America for the funeral of her estranged mother.

THE MIRACLE CLUB is a well-meaning drama with dashes of comedy, but it is less about religion than you might assume for a movie about a trip to the religious site of Lourdes. Rather, it is more about self-reflection on long-held grudges, guilt and regrets, and the possibility of forgiveness and hope. While the film is warm, it is also predictable, although it is lifted by its remarkable cast, which includes Laura Linney and Stephen Rea. The Irish dramedy is based on a story by Jimmy Smallhorne, with a screenplay by Smallhorne, Timothy Prager and Joshua D. Maurer.

Eileen (Kathy Bates) is one of the two hoping for a miracle. She has discovered a lump in her breast and although she hasn’t been to a doctor, she is sure it is cancer, so she is hoping for a miracle cure from Lourdes famous waters. She is also looking for a break from her stressful home life, with a chaotic house full of children and a lazy husband, Frank (Stephen Rea), who does nothing to help out. Young wife and mother Dolly (Agnes O’Casey) is hoping for a miracle for her school age son, Daniel (Eric D. Smith), who has never spoken a word, and is determined to go to Lourdes despite opposition from her domineering husband George (Mark McKenna), who leaves all the care of the house, Daniel and their newborn baby entirely to his wife while treating her with dismissive disrespect. Lily (Maggie Smith), who has a bad leg, isn’t looking for a cure or a miracle, but she dreams of visiting a site she always wanted to see, while she’s still able to travel. Lily is haunted by the death of her only son Declan, who drown in the sea forty years ago, and she frequently visits his seaside memorial plaque, an obsession her needy husband (Niall Buggy) doesn’t understand.

The women live in a neighborhood that is a close-knit community, more like a village than part of a big city. But life is hard, particularly for women in this traditional, patriarchal era, and the women are full of regrets, resentments, disappointments and grudges. The lure of the trip is less religious devotion than the idea of travel to “exotic” France, to a famous place where miracles might happen. Pilgrimage site Lourdes is a perfect spot for this dream, a place where the faithful believe the waters have the power to heal but also somewhere with a reputation as a kind of Catholic “Disneyland,” filled with touristy souvenir shops.

The church talent show is run by the kindly priest Father Dermot Byrne (Mark O’Halloran) in the church hall. But Father Byrne is also overseeing a funeral, for a longtime friend of Lily and Eileen whose daughter left Ireland for American forty years ago under a cloud of scandal. The long-absent daughter, Chrissie (Laura Linney) has now returned for the funeral, although she did not arrive in time to say goodbye to her estranged mother.

When Chrissie turns up at the church hall where the talent contest is taking place, the reception she gets from long-ago friends Eileen and Lily is more than chilly – hostile even, with sharp-tongued Eileen especially vicious in her snub.

Yet all four women end up on the bus for the trip to Lourdes, along with the parish priest, who acts as tour director, and hopes for some kind of healing, emotional and spiritual, for the women. Despite Chrissie’s unwelcome presence, Lily, Eileen and Dolly are excited about the trip, which includes a night in a hotel, likely the first time these work-class women have had that experience.

The movie gets off to a slow start and has some stiff, awkward moments, particularly when the characters first get to Lourdes, but about halfway through it takes a turns towards a deeper, human story. The film is plagued by predictability but it is lifted by its great cast, who deliver some sparkling moments despite it all.

This is very much an ensemble film but Agnes O’Casey, the great-granddaughter of legendary Irish playwright Sean O’Casey, is particularly impressive in her first feature film role. Maggie Smith is, as always, amazing but her Lily is a far different, more reserved character, than the Dowager Countess played in “Downton Abbey,” so fans expecting those verbal zingers will be largely disappointed. It is Kathy Bates’ Eileen who is the fiery one in this story, and Eileen peppers the air with some salty language, even laying into Mark O’Halloran’s kindly priest in one drunken tirade.

While the Dublin portion is shot on location, the Lourdes scenes aren’t, with recreated locations and even green screen for some famous sites, which diminished its authenticity. Once again, the film leans on its cast to overcome its problems.

The film also has a little 1960s-era feminist theme, with the wives going off and leaving their outraged, domestically-helpless husbands to cope with taking care of the kiddies and the house, including diaper changes, shopping and cooking. Although, predictably. this leads to a new appreciation of what their wives deal with daily, these scenes back home also yield some nice comic bits, like a very funny Stephen Rea serving his brood a gray-looking stew while complaining about how hard he worked on it.

While not everything goes smoothly for this gentle film about long-held grudges, self-reflection and potential forgiveness against the backdrop of the famous Catholic pilgrimage site, it does find its way to a warm if expected resolution by the end. The film is really aimed at a certain kind of audience, a more thoughtful, introspective one than an audience looking for an Irish old gal pals kick-up-your-heels comedy trip, along the lines of “80 for Brady.” With its salty language and pointed observations, it might not be for the most devout either. Although there is some snarky jibes (these women are, after all, Irish), those hoping for those sharp-as-glass zingers from Maggie Smith, which she delivered so well in “Downton Abbey,” won’t find them here. Instead, it is Kathy Bates’ character who has the sharp-tongue and she doesn’t hesitate to use it to launch word-bombs, even right there in the church hall. While this is not a unquestioning travel ad for Lourdes, it does treat the religious site with some care, so believers won’t feel uncomfortable in that aspect.

There are things that THE MIRACLE CLUB does get right, like the gritty feel of the low-income Dublin neighborhood, which feels like a village apart from the city itself. The period fashions are well-done, particularly for Agnes O’Casey’s younger Dolly, as well as the sense of women running everything thanklessly for the clueless men, who dismiss their efforts until the women are gone on their trip. Another thing it captures well is the women’s anticipation about what might happen in Lourdes, a mix of religious dreams and real-world doubt. The excitement of the women, whose lives were so hard, just anticipating a night in a hotel, something working-class women of that era might never have done before, is another touch of period realism.

All that means that THE MIRACLE CLUB is not for every audience. There is humor but the film’s thoughtful self-reflective message is the real point.

THE MIRACLE CLUB opens Friday, July 14, in theaters.

RATING: 3 out of 5 stars

TIGER WITHIN – Review

Margot Josefsohn as Casey and Ed Asner as Samuel, in TIGER WITHIN. Photo Courtesy of Menemsha Films

In TIGER WITHIN, a Holocaust survivor (Ed Asner, in his final role) befriends a homeless teen (Margot Josefsohn) in Los Angeles in what might be the ’90s. Directed by Rafal Zielinski and written by Gina Wendkos, TIGER WITHIN is a well-intentioned film, touching on antisemitism, hatred, fear, and prejudices, and highlighting the power of forgiveness and kindness.

Those good intentions, plus Ed Asner in his last big screen role, has earned TIGER WITHIN a place in several Jewish film festivals. All that is in its favor but this rambling coming-of-age film is an up-and-down experience, a film that does not always know how best to convey its message and which it sometimes does awkwardly. At times, there is a feeling that the film is not well thought-out or focused, and there are other moments that are simply awkward, even a bit squirm-inducing. Yet, the film is often rescued by fine performances by Ed Asner and young Margot Josefsohn as the homeless girl, either in their own scenes or together. There are also moments of touching humanity, some surprisingly powerful, and the teen character at the center of the story in particular has the feel of a lived experience.

The story begins “somewhere in Ohio and sometime ago” (as the on-screen titles tell us), where Casey Miller (Margot Josefsohn) is a blonde-haired teenage girl who wears heavy makeup on her large blue eyes and dresses in punk/goth style black. Casey has bounced around to various schools as her single mother has struggled to get by, and Casey feels she has to fight to defend herself against everyone. Despite her hit-first defense strategy, we sense her vulnerability, her fear, and her loneliness.

The film illustrates Casey’s inner feelings, with little doodles, presumably hers, in the margins of the screen, and sometimes covering the whole image. The illustrations are one of the film’s more effective devices, both reminding us this is a very young person and giving us insights into the inner life she hides from the world, more effectively that voice-over or dialog might have done.

On her first day at her new school, Casey is passed a note from a boy bearing a rude, suggestive message, and she reacts angrily with a string of expletives. But it is Casey, not the boy, who goes to the principal’s office, where the principal comments on her history of rebellion as he pages through her thick file. No new start here.

Later at a party, Casey dances and a skin-head boy tags her black leather jacket with a swastika. She yells at him, but he assures her it means nothing, an explanation she seems to accept – shockingly.

At home, Casey and her mother clash over school. While her mother seems to care about her daughter, she has a history of not paying close attention to what Casey does at school or even if she actually goes. Angry Casey accuses her mother of caring more about her latest, and abusive, boyfriend, who is pressuring her mother to kick the girl out. Mom decides to send Casey to her father in California, a man who she has little contact with and who now has a wife and two daughters.

At the L.A. train station, Casey keeps out of sight when her father and family first arrive, and listens as the wife, who is not thrilled to take on this rebellious girl, complaining about her. Discouraged, the teen decides she is better off on the street, with the meager funds her mother gave her for the trip. As evening approaches, she hides in a cemetery – a Jewish one as it happens. It is there that elderly Samuel (Ed Asner) finds the girl in the jacket with a swastika, curled up asleep on a grave, when he comes to the cemetery for his daily visit to his wife’s grave. Why would he befriend such a girl? That we will find out.

Naturally, Casey is suspicious of Samuel and his motives but accepts his offer of a meal and then a shower, and after several missteps, his friendship. Samuel is endlessly patient, telling her about his life, his experience surviving the Holocaust, of his lost daughters and his late wife. Gently he answers her questions, consistently demonstrates kindness, and defends and helps her when she needs it.

We don’t know how old Casey is, and her hard manner and curse-laced speech suggests someone older but as the film progresses, we begin to suspect Casey is much younger than we assumed at first. That subtle shift comes along with the budding friendship, and her growing affection for the grandfatherly Samuel.

While the dialog is sometimes awkward, and some scenes are clumsy and heavy-handed in how they deal with the film’s messages, particularly antisemitism, those missteps are often redeemed by the performances of both Ed Asner and Margot Josefsohn. Their performances are alive with human warmth, and convincing connections. There are some scene that have the potential to go very wrong – as the only work the underage Casey can find, in those moments when she takes off on her own, is in a massage parlor, when she steadfastly refuses to provide any service except with her hand. A delicate approach is required but Canadian-born director Rafal Zielinski, who is Polish-Jewish and grew up in various countries, keeps things on the right path, although at times the script takes things close to an uncomfortable edge.

Samuel is a man with a sense of humor as well as justice, and Ed Asner does a nice job as crafting the character. He seems to endless patience for a teen who is very trying at first, even elusive but whom he comes to view as a surrogate granddaughter, while she grows emotionally under his unwavering emotional support. The more Asner’s Samuel pours unconditional positive regard and gentle encouragement towards the right path, the more Casey relaxes and transforms into who she really can be. He encourages her to find her true self, her tiger within.

While Samuel is Casey’s emotional rock, Asner looks very frail at times. It works for the character, but it also tugs at our heartstrings to watch him at times. The scenes with both Asner and Josefsohn as Casey are so good. due both to Asner’s skill but also to the actors’ chemistry with Margot Josefsohn, who may be an emerging talent. Hopefully she will go on to bigger things after this role, despite the film’s shortcomings.

THE TIGER WITHIN’s chief merit is its good intentions and the performances of Ed Asner and young Margot Josefsohn. While it is far from a perfect film, it’s message of hope, forgiveness and kindness, paired with those nice performances, make this sincerely well-meant little film worthwhile for the right audience.

TIGER WITHIN opens in select theaters and video-on-demand on multiple platforms on Friday, July 7.

RATING: 2.5 out of 4 stars