A curious cure
Director Thaddeus O’sullivan assembled a stellar cast for this period heartwarmer but he needed them to perform miracles to turn his fishy script into a dramatic feast.
There’s a Sunday afternoon TV feel to The Miracle Club which sends two Oscar winners and one Oscar nominee on a pilgrimage to Lourdes.
Early scenes trade in wry comedy and nostalgia as we take in the sights and sounds of a Dublin suburb in 1967.
Kids can safely play in the clean streets and pictures of flamenco dancers adorn the walls of the terraced houses and menfolk are thrown into moral panic by the prospect of changing a nappy or peeling a spud.
But three women are determined to abandon their useless husbands to visit the Catholic shrine where Saint Bernadette met the Virgin Mary and where nuns now dunk the faithful in disease-curing waters.
The fearsome Eileen (Kathy Bates) is worried about a lump in her breast.
Lily (Dame Maggie Smith) sports one built-up shoe and her heart has been shattered by the death of a son.
Kindly twenty-something Dolly (Agnes O’casey) is praying a magic bath will make her mute little boy utter his first words.
Chrissie (Laura Linney) has a more mysterious reason for boarding the coach. She has just returned to the neighbourhood from Boston, 40 years after being banished for getting pregnant by Lily’s now-dead son.
Eileen, slightly implausibly, was once Chrissie’s best friend (Bates is 16 years older than Linney) but, like Lily, still harbours a strange resentment for this poor woman.
It will probably come as no surprise to learn that the miracle involves sudden outbreaks of compassion and solidarity. But you may find it slightly jarring to see issues like abortion, cancer and suicide drenched in such a deep well of sentimentality.
‘‘ It’s slightly jarring to see serious issues drenched in a deep well of sentimentality