Four Letters Of Love

Bluesky

A best-selling novel first published in 1997, Niall Williams’ Four Letters Of Love charmed readers around the world, and one of them was Helena Bonham-Carter. Film projects rarely come together at speed, however, and it was only last year that the big screen adaptation finally went into production. As a consequence, Bonham-Carter appears not as the heroine but in the supporting role of her mother. Pierce Brosnan likewise takes a back seat as the hero’s father, so don’t be led astray by their joint headline billing. The young stars in the central roles work well enough, however, and there’s another nice supporting turn from Gabriel Byrne as the heroine’s father.

There are always interesting storytelling possibilities in exploring who people were, and what they did, before they fell in love. At a structural level, it allows one to explore the ways in which two people might fit together without the distraction of the romance itself. It also generates a degree of natural tension as readers or viewers invest themselves in what they understand is supposed to happen, even conjuring up notions of destiny, even if the tide of events appears to be carrying the characters in a different direction. There’s plenty there to work with in a two hour film. It’s a pity that the author, inexperienced when it comes to adaptation, also tries to cram in all the vaguely supernatural events from the book, rather than using just enough to capture its atmosphere, because this overloads the finished work and in places threatens to topple it completely.

We begin with Nicholas (Fionn O’Shea), an awkward youth whose home life is turned upside down when his father has some kind of religious epiphany and forsakes his familial duties to become a painter on a remote western isle. This happens to be where Isabel (Ann Skelly) is growing up and caring for her disabled brother Sean (Dónal Finn) before she heads off to study and get stern looks from nuns. Their paths run close together on several occasions, not quite intersecting, as he meanders through life with the vague aim of becoming a writer and she, the daughter of a poet, falls for a musician with a twee moustache and a disapproving mother. Rather like that mother, viewers are discouraged from supporting this relationship, and Isabel experiences a nagging sense of dissatisfaction, whilst Nicholas is guided by dreams and visions. Will they figure it all out before it’s too late?

Williams’ work is heavily invested in the ambiguities of coincidence. Is there magic at work? Might a poem written in childhood cast a spell? In literature, where there is room to play, this is one thing, but when condensed in a film it starts to feel like clumsy contrivance. A scene which will make anyone with experience of physical disability wince is just one example of how ridiculous this gets, and although Anne Nikitin’s soundtrack is strong, essentially the soul of the film, at moments like this it feels like it’s trying to bludgeon us into accepting too much. Towards the end there’s a sequence in which Bonham-Carter’s character takes drastic action to try to wrest back control of events, and although it’s intended to be poignant, the peculiar amount of trouble she goes to, for something that might have been accomplished with a single candle, turns it into comedy.

If you’re already invested in this story as a fan of the book, you’ll find much here to please you. Bonham-Carter and Byrne work beautifully together, the characters are lovingly drawn, the costuming works well and the Galway scenery is properly enchanting. Newcomers to the tale, however, are likely to find this version cluttered and frustrating, finally collapsing under its own weight.

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