You can spot the pro-Ireland messaging from one skip away in this film, set in Dublin and the West Country. We have: 1. God. 2. Yeats. 3. Windswept seascapes. The marketing of Four Letters of Love promises a film for “die-hard romantics.” A quick flip through mind’s film Filofax – Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, Wuthering Heights, The Notebook, Sleepless in Seattle, Titanic… Were we in for a treat? Directed by Polly Steele, with the scriptwriter, Niall Williams, adapting his own 1997 debut book. Was that advisable?
Opening with Anne Skelly playing Isabel Gore, daughter of poet-schoolteacher Muiris Gore (Gabriel Byrne). Isabel is jiggling excitedly on the edge of a cliff, to the piping of her brother. Was this someone’s insightful idea to represent her as a spirited risk-taker? Unfortunately, all one gets is the impression of a very pretty girl who is also an eejit. (She doesn’t fall, it’s the brother Sean (Donal Finn) who has a seizure. Was he blowing too hard on his pipe?) For the majority of the rest of the story, Sean is silent and in a wheelchair. The director really overdoes the close-ups on his silent suffering. Though actually, Finn’s performance is good—he brings an intensity that the other young leads don’t manage.
Like a leprechaun, in prances Helena Bonham Carter as wife and mother, Margaret Gore. Is it just me, or does Bonham-C always remind one of a yapping Pekingese? Still, Gabriel Byrne and herself, as a long-married couple, deliver their scenes warmly, credibly and likeably.
Cut to Dublin city, where Pierce Brosnan plays William Coughlan, a long-suffering civil servant whom God tells to go and paint. So off he goes with his bag of brushes, a long face and an even longer staff—like some sort of Gandalf. He gives nary a backward glance at his wife Betty (Imelda May) or son Nicholas, (Fionn O’Shea), who has poetical ambitions and who plays part-narrator. Imposing on us, the audience some of the worst, most pretentious quotes you’ve ever heard in your life: “To these days I am to return again and again throughout my life, for in them is the immanence of love”. Roll of eyes.
Meanwhile, Isabel is sent off the mainland to a strict convent, and the first chance she gets she hoikes it over the locked gate and meets Peader (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo), aka Mr Wrong, who happens to be passing in his red Triumph 2000. The romance thickens and Isabel ends up being expelled and running off to Gretna Green. Ah no! I’m kidding with ye now… she shacks up with Peader and his mother in their haberdashery shop.
What is notable about these three young actors (Skelly, O’Shea and Walsh-Peelo) is that they all look the part, but their performances lack that thing that makes for compelling screentime… what is the word I’m looking for? Depth.
You might say the same about Brosnan’s performance, who returns home to find his wife dead in her bed. (Causes not specified—did she waste away? Suicide?) No spoilers, but Gandalf’s painting is put up for a prize and ends up out West in the family home of Isabel and the Gores. (A paint-thin premise?)
Many of Steele’s films have issues with pacing and timing. There are lags and leaps in all the wrong spots, like an ungainly dancer at a wedding. True! There is a slight romantic uplift in one dance scene – another Irish jig – though slo-mo of itself doth not romance make. Alack! The screen chemistry between Isabel and Nicholas is lacklustre. Nicholas, though apparently dying of love, wears an expression akin to an uncooked potato. This is not what you want in a grand romance. Two hot glances across a frozen bog would have done it. (There will be no mention of Mr Darcy or Colin Firth in this review.)
Throughout the film there are a number of what I’d describe as missing camera shots—a bit like knitting with dropped stitches. For example, when Nicholas and Isabel finally meet properly, she runs in radiant, but there’s no immediate cut to his close-up reaction to her, aka the locking of eyes. Surely, Romeo and Juliet 101?
Suffice to say, when Isabel returns to the mainland and Mr Wrong, Nicholas writes four love letters. (A Yeats reference.) Given she’s a mere ferry ride away it’s all a bit… chinless?
The story is inoffensive enough but lacks what poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning describes as the “depth and breadth and height” that make for a truly grand passion.

My rating: A right pair of soggy socks and a rainbow.
Two shamrocks out of five.