The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Secrets by the seaside
Sisters and setting help set enjoyable noir ‘Blow the Man Down’ apart
A fishing boat floats in calm waters on a chilly and entirely overcast day. ¶ A man starts singing the English sea shanty “Blow the Man Down” as the camera pans to the right to reveal him on a nearby dock. ¶ As the fisherman continues singing the catchy tune — and is soon joined by other men — we are flooded with images of work being done involving freshcaught fish. ¶ While the film “Blow the Man Down” — which recently debuted on Amazon’s Prime Video service — ultimately is a rather conventional tale involving the dark secrets of a small American town, it gets a nice boost from its fish-forward New England setting.
The tale takes place in fictional Easter Cove, along the rocky coast of Maine — the film was shot in March 2018 in Harpswell, Maine — and its seasalty flavor is evident from those opening moments.
After those, we are introduced to Priscilla Connolly (Sophie Lowe), the young Irish-Catholic woman quietly practicing the eulogy she is about to give for her mother, Mary Margaret Connolly, an integral town matriarch. Priscilla’s younger sister, Mary Beth (Morgan Saylor), soon finds her by the water and offers her a drink from her flask.
At a post-funeral gathering at the Connolly home, Mary Beth is approached by Doreen Burke (Marceline Hugot), one of a handful of women who quietly oversee all sorts of affairs in Easter Cove.
“Now, I know you’re feeling bad about missing college and losing the house,” Doreen begins, “but, I’ll tell you, later in life you’ll be glad you put family first.”
Unlike Priscilla, who’s taken over the family fish shop, Mary Beth has been dying to leave town and has been harboring no intentions of putting family first. She immediately accosts her sister, who admits their mother leveraged their house against a loan for the shop and had fallen behind on pavements.
Later, Priscilla has dinner alone — fish, of course — as Mary Beth hits the pavement and soon finds herself in a town pub. She encounters and parties with a man named Gorski (Ebon Moss-Bachrach of AMC’s “NOS4A2”).
He has drugs and a gun in his car, and their night ends, well, very badly.
The resulting incident has the potential to greatly shape the lives of both Mary Beth and Priscilla.
The events of that night also have a major impact on another powerful town matriarch, Enid Nora Devlin, portrayed by renowned character actress Margo Martindale. She owns the Oceanview Bed and Breakfast, which, we quickly learn, serves as a brothel, patronized by men whose work brings them to the port town.
Although the true nature of Enid’s business has been known and endorsed by them for years, Doreen and two other elder town women — Annette O’Toole (Gail Maguire, “Smallville”) and Susie Gallagher (June Squibb, “Nebraska”) — believe it may be time for it to fade into the town’s history.
Two other key characters in “Blow the Man Down” are Alexis (Gayle Rankin, Netflix’s “GLOW”), a prostitute under the employ of Enid who starts to question whether her boss has her best interests at heart; and Justin Brennan (Will Brittain, “Kong: Skull Island”), a young police officer who takes an interest in the Connolly sisters.
“Blow the Man Down” is co-written and -directed by Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy, who bonded while attending Wesleyan University in Connecticut and after that working on “scrappy music video shoots” in New York, according to the film’s production notes. That both are from Irish-Catholic families, have sisters and hold connections to New England seaport towns — we’ll note, though, Krudy actually is from Shaker Heights — led to the conception of their “fishing town noir” nearly a decade ago.
Their roughly 90-minute-film feels both personal — they say the characters “were inspired by our moms, aunts, grandmothers and matriarchs” in their lives — and a bit unpolished. It’s most important that we live and breathe with the Connolly sisters, but something is missing from the characters being as interesting as you would like. It feels as though more could been mined from this complex, if familiar, sibling relationship.
Nonetheless, it is easy to relate to and root for Mary Beth and Priscilla, thanks largely to the subtle performances of Saylor (“White Girl,” “Homeland”) and Lowe (“Above Suspicion,” “Beautiful Kate”), respectively. And, as always, Martindale (“Instant Family,” “Sneaky Pete”) is a joy, even if Enid likely won’t prove to be one of her more memorable characters.
In those opening moments of the film, the fisherman sings, “Give me some time to blow the man down.”
Well, you likely won’t regret giving a little time to “Blow the Man Down.”