CIFF: “My Sailor My Love” - Film Review
If Oscar nominations for both The Banshees of Inisherin and The Quiet Girl have proved nothing else, it’s that a director of photography has to work quite hard to make Ireland look unappealing. That’s also the case with My Sailor My Love. Set in an Irish seaside town, the film offers sweeping drone shots of winding roads along the cliffside and sheep ambling along the way. Nestled at the end of a dirt road is a single house belonging to Howard (James Cosmo), a gruff, retired sailor who has lost his motivation for living. His house is filthy, he refuses to move to a retirement home, and his only daily activity seems to be crossword puzzles. Grace (Catherine Walker), his daughter, is adamant that something has to change. She and her husband Martin (Aidan O'Hare) arrive first for Howard’s birthday party, only to find the house in an absolute state of disarray. The burden to make the home presentable falls on Grace, and she has to get it done before her siblings breeze in without a care in the world. In an effort to alleviate some of her own stress, Grace hires Annie (Brid Brennan) to be Howard’s housekeeper. It’s Annie’s gentle, caring nature that forces some of Howard’s walls to crumble.
Throughout the beginning of the film, there’s a theme of second chances, of the power of kindness to help someone out of a deep pit of hopelessness. It’s a valiant message. One that isn’t talked about nearly enough because society is afraid to talk about mental health. Howard won’t talk about anything. At least he won’t talk about anything to Grace. Annie is a different story. She’s his contemporary and there’s an attraction between them. It’s her persistent kindness that eventually allows him to reconsider the hermit lifestyle he’s made for himself.
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On its own, that’s a lovely story. Watching Howard play with Annie’s grandchildren and seeing him open his house on Christmas to make space for family is touching. However, lurking beneath all this growth is his treatment of Grace. He’s always gruff with her. At his birthday party, he barely addresses her and rejects the cake she brings for him. At the same time, he accepts the rum his sons give him, despite the fact that he gave up drinking years ago. Grace is also seen attending some type of group therapy that’s seemingly mandated, but the reasons she’s attending aren’t clear. Eventually, Grace tells Annie the truth about her childhood with Howard. It was more than just dads and daughters not getting along. Howard abandoned Grace when she was fourteen to care for her severely depressed mother.
With that turn of events, the viewer jumps to a conclusion about where this film will go from that conflict. The two will reconcile painfully and then Howard will pass on. Only one of those things happens. Instead of reconciliation, the movie paints Grace as a villain of sorts, standing in the way of the love between Howard and Annie. The script lacks the nuance required to explain exactly why the relationship bothers Grace so much. Instead, the script neglects Grace’s deep pain in favor of the easier story of two elderly people finding love when they thought it wouldn’t be possible again. Instead of forcing Howard to come to terms with his treatment of Grace and his ex-wife, My Sailor My Love plays it on the safe side.
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There’s potential in My Sailor My Love. The film’s central relationship is the most compelling aspect of the movie, but the script lacks the deft hand required to pull it off. Toward the middle of the film, My Sailor My Love becomes disappointingly melodramatic. The verité emotion of the film’s opening scene that shows Grace in therapy is squandered when Howard and Annie reach into a basket for the same apple in a classic, aggressively twee rom com moment.
My Sailor My Love is not the first film to focus on a gruff old man’s ability to open himself up to love again. Up and Driveways are far more successful iterations of the genre that show the totality of what it means to learn and grow from the past. My Sailor My Love gets most of the way there, but cannot neatly tie the bow on its story.
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