Films like “Ondine” don’t come that often...watch it on a cold and windy night.

| Nov 10, 2024

The unique combination of hopeful fantasy and gritty, overcast realism marry in a heartwarming drama, not for children, but rather for the child in every adult.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 18, 2023

A lyrical modern fairytale. [Full review in Spanish]

| Oct 11, 2022

An intriguing mix of working-class grit and childlike fantasy that never fully comes together.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 8, 2021

I think that some fantasy fans will be disappointed by Ondine. I was not. For the film shows that shape-shifting is just one kind of magical metamorphosis.

| Mar 5, 2020

Any good feelings Jordan may have built with his audience by suggesting Ondine as a contemporary fairy tale soon sour as his story turns into something else altogether.

| Jan 22, 2020

Sweet, charming, magical, let yourself fall under the spell of Ondine.

| Nov 7, 2019

Jordan delivers his story with a little sting of salt as well.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Oct 24, 2019

One of those films that keeps almost ending, but just as your flattened spirits perk up a bit in anticipation, you realize there's a whole other wearisome sequence to go through before the characters emote their way to the obvious finale.

| Dec 14, 2018

Things start to go awry when we realize that the film's emotional sensitivity doesn't go much deeper than its moody surfaces.

| Nov 13, 2013

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 4, 2011

An Irish selkie tale for adults.

| Original Score: B | Dec 30, 2010

Understated in its subversion of, and then canny adherence to, its chosen folklore

| Original Score: B+ | Nov 21, 2010

A fairy tale for adults from Neil Jordan

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 28, 2010

full review at Movies for the Masses

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Sep 11, 2010

He's an Irishman, she's a seal. It'll never work.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 26, 2010

An imperfect film, but it's the kind of imperfect film with staying power.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 4, 2010

Ondine works OK when it's trying to be a romantic fantasy. Screenwriter/director Neil Jordan can't leave well enough alone, though. His fable suddenly turns dark and nasty in the final third, when it becomes a thriller.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 8, 2010

At its most affecting, this uneven quasi-fantasy is about people hungering for myth

| Jul 6, 2010

Hard to swallow fish tale.

| Original Score: C | Jul 3, 2010