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

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

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

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

| Original Score: B+ | Nov 21, 2010

Some complexities of story will be lost on audiences not tuned to the regional Irish brogue that is the mother tongue of this little fishing community. But Christopher Doyle's dark lush photography plucks the green coast of Cork like a harp.

| Jun 25, 2010

Ondine is dipped in whimsy and might have drifted out to sea, but it's bounded on four sides by love stories - between a father and a daughter, a man and a mermaid, an actor and his co-star, and a director and his country.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 25, 2010

Among the film's pleasures is a disarmingly tender performance from the new, improved Colin Farrell.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 24, 2010

Silkies aren't the only creatures who can inhabit two worlds. As Annie knows, and as Jordan's film makes clear, stories enable us to step outside the quotidian world and dream, if only for an hour or two.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 18, 2010

Jordan starts to tell an intriguing tale about living with fantasy but falls back on plot turns cued to the flashing lights of cops and paramedics.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 18, 2010

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.

| Jun 18, 2010

A lyrical, if slight, breeze of an Irish fable.

Full Review | Jun 18, 2010

Jordan, who also wrote the screenplay, makes some gentle jabs at small-town nosiness and claustrophobia, even as he spins out the shadowy riddles of the story.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 18, 2010

It's a film that leaves me very conflicted in that I wish there were more like it in theory and I love star Colin Farrell's recent career decisions, but a film cannot be judged on intentions and Ondine simply doesn't float.

| Jun 11, 2010

The characters' needs are so simple they're almost mysterious, and the story traces an elusive line between fond fantasy and harsh reality.

| Jun 11, 2010

This movie is a one-of-a-kind experience -- blarney carried to rhapsodic heights.

| Original Score: A- | Jun 11, 2010

If this movie were a human being, it would be intelligent and sincere but so depressed as to be unable to get out of bed without a forklift.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 10, 2010

Full of melancholy and blarney...

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 10, 2010

Women tend to hide secrets in the original scripts of filmmaker Neil Jordan.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Jun 10, 2010

It sort of falls flat.

Full Review | Jun 7, 2010

There are some interesting secondary characters, but you didn't get I thought a full enough sense of this world and it's dramatic stakes.

Full Review | Jun 7, 2010

If only the film had stuck with its fairy-tale story. Instead, the final 30 minutes turn into a bloody thriller with a tacked-on happy ending.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 4, 2010