The Miracle Club (PG, 90mins) Directed by Thaddeus O’Sullivan ***
It’s a day Chrissie Ahearn (Laura Linney) had long dreaded – returning home to the Irish village she was banished from 40 years ago.
To make matters worse, a flight cancellation has meant she has even missed her own mother’s funeral.
What Chrissie does catch though is that evening’s local church-run Ballygar All Stars Talent Show, where competitors are vying for the chance to win a miracle.
More precisely, it’s the opportunity to go on a pilgrimage to Lourdes, France, where 62 of those have occurred since an apparition of the Virgin Mary spoke to people multiple times in 1858.
Among the competitors are singing trio The Miracles – Lily Fox (Maggie Smith), Eileen Dunne (Kathy Bates) and Dolly Hennessy (Agnes O’Casey) – performing this night to honour the memory Chrissie’s mum Maureen. Each has a reason for wanting to make the trip across the sea – two for their sons, one because of their own health issue. So the consolation prize of a bacon joint is disappointing to say the least. However, despair turns to joy when the young winner generously donates his prize to them.
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Chrissie Ahearn (Laura Linney), pictured with Father Dermot Byrne (Mark O’Halloran), not only has her mother’s interment to worry about when she returns to Ballygar after a four-decade absence.
For Eileen though, any elation is tempered by the sight of Chrissie, whose presence dredges up still raw emotions. When the much younger Dolly queries who she is, Eileen explains that while “her mother was a Saint, she’d sour milk, that one”.
Crushed by the animosity still harboured towards her, Chrissie’s discovery that her mother had been planning her own trip to Lourdes prompts her to tell parish priest Father Dermot Byrne (Mark O’Halloran) that he should give her ticket “to someone who needs it – I’m not looking for a cure”.
Finally making it to the big screen after almost two decades gestation (a 2005 HBO production was slated to star Joan Allen and Claire Danes, as well as Smith and Bates), The Miracle Club is a solid, but unspectacular tale of recrimination and regret.
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Lily Fox (Maggie Smith), Dolly Hennessy (Agnes O’Casey) and Eileen Dunne (Kathy Bates) are The Miracles.
The script, by a trio of writers, marches to somewhat predictable emotional beats (a confession here, a grudge built on a misunderstanding there), while drawing humour from the flailing efforts of Lily, Dolly and Eileen’s husbands (Niall Buggy, Mark McKenna, Stephen Rea) to look after themselves – and their families – in their wives’ absence.
It’s smile-raising, if a little twee and somewhat at odds with the more emotionally meaty and messy continuing fallout from events and actions four decades earlier.
Veteran Irish director Thaddeus O’Sullivan (Ordinary Decent Criminal, Into the Storm) never quite manages to convincingly navigate the choppier waters, The Miracle Club’s central drama failing to compel as it perhaps should, despite the best efforts of Linney (The Big C), Bates (Misery) and Smith (The Lady in the Van).
The Miracle Club is now screening in select cinemas nationwide.
