Philomena

It was so easy to see that this movie would transmit a feeling of pity! It had everything for it to happen. A really young woman who becomes pregnant in Ireland during the fifties, a family that despises her because of this, a Catholic convent who submit her to a brutal regime of work in exchange for "supporting" her and her child, an adoption that occurred without her approval and fifty years after the events, a regret that has lasted a lifetime.

Not in the proper hands, this story, which actually happened and became a book written by journalist Martin Sixmith, would have been adapted to emphasize the most tearful moments of the story. Fortunately for the film, the script writer is Steve Coogan, who is better known to be a quite talented comedian in the UK.

Thanks to the balance that the script brings between an odd couple comedy and the discussion of major issues, Philomena never falls into the easy traps that we all know. It would have been easier to make Philomena to bitterly hate the nuns who sold her son to an American couple or paint the journalist as a "defender of the truth" who selflessly wish to help an old lady: but this trivialization of events was skillfully avoided.

Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope avoid the easy scenes and focus on the relationship that forms between Martin and Philomena. They are very different beings: he is educated from prestigious universities, she has little to almost no education and she is a lover of cheap romance novels; he, sophisticated, atheist, confident, while she is Catholic and yet full of doubts. And yet both need each other, as he has to regain his lost prestige with a story of "general interest" that could sell well to the newspapers, like Philomena's, who needs his contacts and experience to finally find his son. The way each will influence the behavior of the other, is the best aspect of this drama.

To say that Judi Dench is a great actress is almost redundant. However, even if she is nominated for an Oscar for her performance at Philomena, is the performance of Steve Coogan, who also wrote and produced the film to deserve the honors in this film. Thanks to his sense of timing for dialogues, so particular to comedians, the humor of the script "touches" almost all scenes without losing that dramatic force and, on the contrary, making it gain vitality and freshness.

This quality plus the proper direction of Stephen Frears and a beautiful and subtle theme music by Alexandre Desplat, make the story unfold in front of us fluently without asking us to take sides of one or the other. Both act accordingly, both are wrong, both learn. 

Director: Stephen Frears

Writers: Steve Coogan (screenplay), Jeff Pope (screenplay)

Stars: Judi Dench, Steve Coogan