My Sailor, My Love: Sharp writing, subtle acting and a winning Irish setting

My Sailor, My Love: James Cosmo and Bríd Brennan in Klaus Härö’s film, shot on Achill Island. At about the same time that a certain Oscar-nominated Martin McDonagh film was shooting on Achill, another, more modestly budgeted project was constructing a very different narrative on the same island. Directed by Klaus Härö, the experienced Finnish filmmaker behind The Fencer, the new release, My Sailor, My Love, sets out in an apparently predictable direction – one reworked in a thousand romance novels – before veering down a rockier, less familiar path. It doesn’t exactly subvert expectations, but the sharp writing and subtle acting make for a more satisfying experience than a bald synopsis promises. There is maybe the tiniest sliver of Joseph L Mankiewicz’s indestructible The Ghost and Mrs. Muir about Härö’s film. In that romantic fantasy, Gene Tierney had to win over an irascible sea captain who, though some time dead, still hung about his seaside cottage. Howard, played with hulking charisma by James Cosmo, is very much among the living, but, in his nostalgia for the sea and his unhappiness with modern life, does remind us of Rex Harrison in the 1947 flick. The ghost initially seeks to scare away the latest tenant in his old home. Howard is more brutal still to his new housekeeper. Told his daughter has paid Annie (Bríd Brennan) €400, he – despite scoffing decent-looking bacon and cabbage – offers her €500 to “never darken my door again”. You would be right […]

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