Ondine

City Paper Grade: A-

by Sam Adams

THE FISHER KING: Colin Farrell proves he's more than a tabloid headline in Neil Jordan's neo-fairy tale.

Colin Farrell, whose performance likewise synthesizes the best elements of previous and less satisfying turns, is Syracuse, a West Cork fisherman struggling to support himself, let alone his wife and disabled daughter, on the meager proceeds of a life at sea. For him, at least, the fish refuse to bite, until one day he hauls in his catch and finds a woman (Alicja Bachleda) tangled in his nets, who calls herself Ondine. The woman's rough English provides few clues, but her strange, wordless singing makes fish swarm around Syracuse, a feat sufficiently rare as to seem magical. His daughter theorizes she may be a selkie, an ancient British twist on the mermaid myth — an idea that grows more plausible as the strangeness of her existence sinks in.

It's difficult to walk the line between fantasy and the real world without straying too far to one side (or simply cheating), but Jordan masterfully modulates the movie's tone. Even as Syracuse contemplates the impossibility, the mossy textures of Christopher Doyle's camera work provide a tactile sense of the world around him. Even better, Jordan manages to resolve the question without making you feel as if you've been led by the nose; you could argue that he's simply exchanged one sort of fairy tale for another. It's rare these days to find movies that can create a believable world or make sense of our own. Ondine miraculously does both.