Brooklyn

It's so noice when everyone's noice, isn't it?

Eilis (Saoirse Ronan) is a young woman living a claustrophobic life in a small town in the Ireland of 1950.  Her elder sister, wanting more of a life for her sister than she has managed to find, arranges for Eilis to travel to New York where a job has been arranged for her through Father Flood, the local Irish priest.  

Naive, fearful and severely homesick, Eilis initially hates her new life, but slowly adapts to her new surroundings.  It helps that so many people - her landlady, her boss and Father Flood - are being so noice to her.  Life improves dramatically when she meets a noice Italian boy and they fall in love.  Suddenly Brooklyn is home and her future is there to be taken.

A family tragedy takes her back to her home town.  Intending to stay for only a month, pressures from her mother, oldest friend and the wider community she left behind conspire to make that time stretch out.  She finds herself, almost by accident, with a good job, a circle of friends and a noice Irish boy who wants her to stay.

And therein lies the dilemma which frames the story.  Who does she choose to make a life with?  Her noice Italian plumber in Brooklyn, or the noice, wealthy Irishman back home?  Where is her real home now?

No spoilers here - she makes her choice and the film ends with that decision.  

The cinematography is beautiful and the feel for the period suberb, with the social mores of the two contrasting societies laid bare.  Ronan is pitch perfect in the lead role, the character developing with her experiences and laying her emotions bare.  She has ability to convey a variety of emotions with her facail expressions that marks out all great screen actors.  The supporting cast has been well chosen, not a dud amongst them.  Standing out from the pack was the always reliable Jim Broadbent as the avuncular Flood, and Eva Birthistle as the experienced fellow passenger who takes Eilis in hand on the boat across the Atlantic.  

With such ingredients the dish should have been a satisfying one.  But I left still hungry for a bit of genuine drama.  Everyone in the Eilis universe is just so damn noice, with conflict and anger absent from the world.  (There is one enjoyably bitchy character back in Ireland, but she's put in her place by somebody noice.  And the worst crime in Brooklyn seems to be 'giddiness'.)  I kept on waiting for something to happen, something to test Eilis' mettle, but it never arrived.

On Coney Island Eilis and Tony walk hand in hand, eating candyfloss.  Which is how I felt when the (very sudden) end came - pretty, sugary, and nothing to bite on.

But at least everyone's noice.