February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Sheridan based the story on his own experiences and those of his children, Kirsten and Naomi, 6 and 9 years old, respectively, at the time of their trans-Atlantic move, co-writing the final screenplay with his daughters, now grown and filmmakers in their own right. The senior Sheridan counterparts onscreen, Sarah (Samantha Morton) and Johnny Sullivan (Paddy Considine), have come to this city to fulfill Johnny’s ambition to be a stage actor, short on funds but armed with a cheerful optimism that is soon eroded by the daily grind of attending endless auditions and driving a cab to make ends meet.
Sheridan works his way through a checklist of trials and tribulations that are familiar to those who’ve made similar journeys to establish themselves in New York — getting the “over-here-on-holidays” story straight at the immigration checkpoint on the way in from Canada, coping with the unbearable summer weather (apparently it’s the humidity) and sparking fuse-box disasters with 240-volt plugs in 120-volt sockets. Latent Irish prejudices are laid to rest when scary neighbors of various ethnicities turn out to be fine fellows indeed, and close friendships develop that make this unyielding city a much more human place to be.
The story is told from the point of view of Christy (Sarah Bolger), Johnny and Sarah’s camcorder-toting 10-year-old daughter, and the child’s perspective on the city gives the film a magic-realist quality, reminiscent of Sheridan’s script for “Into the West” 11 years ago, and enhanced by Declan Quinn’s iridescent camerawork. The dank tenement building in which the Sullivans find an apartment is also home to a threatening assembly of junkies and dealers, but through the eyes of the narrator and her younger sister, Ariel (Emma Bolger), the parents come to see it as house full of fascinating characters.
Their lives intersect with that of a neighbor, Mateo (Djimon Hounsou), an angry African artist who is charmed by the trick-or-treating youngsters at Halloween, and mellows his demeanor to become a friend to the whole family. Stricken with a fatal illness, Mateo’s stoicism in the face of his own mortality helps unify the Sullivans to cope with their own traumas — a difficult pregnancy for Sarah as she yearns for a child to replace the loss of her youngest from a brain tumor, back in Ireland, and an emotional blockage for aspiring thespian
Johnny, numbed by grief since his son’s death.
If the family’s failure to encounter a single Irish person in New York who might give them a leg up seems a little preposterous, and the kit of parts in the Sheridans’ story — a fatal illness, the loss of a child, and a redemptive journey of rebirth — seem straight out of tele-novella land, Sheridan is too talented a director to take the soap route and turn out schmaltz and tear-jerking sentimentality. His masterly handling of his material and his cast transcends the clich