Taglines: The truth is not what you know. It’s what you believe.
Syracuse is a simple fisherman who catches a beautiful and mysterious woman in his trawler’s nets. The woman seems to be dead, but then she comes alive before Syracuse’s eyes and he thinks he may be seeing things. However, with the help of his ailing, yet irrepressible daughter, Annie, he comes to believe that the fantastical might be possible and that the woman (Ondine) might be a myth come true.
Ondine and Syracuse fall passionately in love, but just as we think the fairytale might go on forever, the real world intercedes. Then, after a terrible car crash and the return of a dark and violent figure from Ondine’s past, hope eventually prevails and a new beginning is presented to Syracuse, Ondine and Annie.
Ondine is an Irish romantic drama film directed and written by Neil Jordan and starring Colin Farrell and Alicja Bachleda. The film was shot on location in Castletownbere, Ireland, and touches the possible existence of the mythological selkie bringing hope and love to humans they so much want to become.
The film had its North American premiere as part of the Toronto International Film Festival on 14 September 2009 in Toronto, Canada, and European premiere as part of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival on 18 February 2010 in Dublin, Ireland.
As 2007 came to a close, Neil Jordan found himself in Los Angeles, a writer/director caught amid the uncertainty of the Hollywood writers strike, preparing a studio film that looked like it would be postponed. Without a foreseeable end to the strike, Jordan decided to head home to Ireland to work on a new screenplay. “I had this idea for a story of a fisherman who catches a girl in his nets. I wasn’t sure where it would go, but I just decided to write it,” he says. “So the story of ONDINE evolved from that first image: a fisherman who finds a body in his nets that seems to be dead but turns out to be alive. There was something in those initial images that suggested both a fairytale and an awful, harsh reality. I just let the ideas go where they would.”
The story Jordan wove is a contemporary interpretation of a classic fairy tale that tells the lyrical story of a fisherman, his estranged daughter, and their encounter with a beautiful and mysterious stranger. The film creates its imagery and mythology from a realistic series of events taking place in the lush and haunting landscape of the remote Southwest Irish coast. The enchantment, darkness and mystique of the story come from the sea and the vistas of an Irish fishing village as viewed through the eyes of a sick child with an unwavering belief in the miraculous.
One of the first people Jordan showed the script to was Colin Farrell, whom he has known for a number of years. “I read ONDINE and loved it,” says Farrell. “It’s a really beautiful story, a really magical piece.”
Farrell immediately agreed to play the lead role (the fisherman Syracuse), which proved to be the crucial piece of casting. “We needed a considerable budget,” says Jordan. “So we basically needed Colin to get the film made.” With Farrell on board, Jordan set out raising finance for ONDINE.
In early January 2008, the writer/director contacted James Flynn at Octagon Films. A conversation about financing film in Ireland culminated with Jordan asking Flynn to help produce ONDINE. “Within a day of talking to Neil I read the screenplay,” says Flynn. “My first thoughts were: this is classic Neil Jordan. It worked on all levels.”
One of the first stops in Flynn’s quest for financing was producer Ben Browning at New York-based Wayfare Entertainment. Browning first read the screenplay in February 2008. “I had always been a fan of Neil Jordan’s writing and when I got ONDINE I read it that evening and passed it on to my business partners Peter and Michael,” he says. “We made an offer on the film the next day and flew to Dublin to meet Neil.” The remainder of the budget was raised through local incentives including state tax incentives (Section 481) and the Irish Film Board.
In March, Flynn and Browning travelled to Jordan’s house in Castletownbere to discuss the film. “When we first spoke with Neil,” Browning says, “he explained that he had a house in the southwest of Ireland and he had written the script in order for it to be shot within five kilometers of his house in any direction. When I came down to Castletownbere it felt as if we were walking through the script: everything from McCarthy’s Bar, to the street in Castletownbere and up to Poulin Harbour – everything that we saw seemed to come to life in terms of the screenplay.”
Making the movie in Castletownbere was important to Jordan for a number of reasons. For one, he knew the place intimately so that every location in the screenplay existed in real life. “On the recce when people found that scenes matched up with real life locations they were surprised, but it wasn’t a coincidence. I wrote it that way.” The other major factor was the rugged physicality of the Beara peninsula. “I wanted the film to be about the landscape, for it to have a very intimate relationship with landscape,” says Jordan. “Of course it could have been filmed where I come from, in Connemara or in Sligo, but Castletownbere is a real, working fishing town and quite a bit away from the tourist trail. It has its own identity, its own industry and its own internal life.”
With the finance secure, the cast was then finalized. Farrell was to play Syracuse and Jordan convinced his old friend, Stephen Rea, to play the small but pivotal part of the priest. “Neil was adamant from the start that he wanted to cast a lesser known actor in the part of Ondine,” Browning says. “This was something that the independent film environment can be resistant to but we were supportive of Neil’s intentions, feeling that, as you see the girl come out of the water, to see her as a new face had a real value.”
After an extensive search, the Polish actress Alicja Bachleda was cast as Ondine. Then, Alison Barry, a ten-year-old schoolgirl from County Cork with no previous acting experience was cast in the crucial role of Annie. The acclaimed cinematographer Chris Doyle (CHUNGKING EXPRESS, RABBIT-PROOF FENCE) was hired and shooting on ONDINE started in July 2008. It was completed in eight weeks over one of the wettest Irish summers on record.
“There are certain films that Neil Jordan has made where we have a love story between two central characters that have had a difficult past,” Flynn says. “Beneath their attempts to connect there is usually some menace lurking or some aspect likely to threaten them.” Browning sees it as “a lyrical fairytale set in Ireland with a romance at its core.”
For Jordan, ONDINE is a personal project and a break from big budget studio productions. In this simple tale, he pares back the superstructure of the industry to something sparse, simple and original. “Sometimes circumstances force you to strip down your aesthetic to the bones and reinvent yourself,” he says. “Sometimes large is great, sometimes small is even better. I think that the worst thing you can do is repeat yourself.”
The Casting Story
When thinking about casting ONDINE, Jordan believed that Farrell was perfect for the part of Syracuse. “I don’t think Colin has been truly explored as an actor,” he says. “When I saw Colin in TIGERLAND, which was the first thing I saw him in, I thought he was absolutely marvelous. He then did a lot of big movies and became a star. It was almost like acting wasn’t demanded of him as it was largely action features he appeared in. It was so refreshing to see him do that film with Martin McDonagh, IN BRUGES, because you saw somebody returning to his roots.”
Farrell immersed himself in the part of Syracuse. He went out on a trawler with a local fisherman to find his sea legs, adopted a West Cork accent and once again blended into the local community (one of his first screen roles was in the 1998 TV drama FALLING FOR A DANCER which was shot in Castletownbere). “At one point I told Colin his character could have Dublin roots but he wanted to go the whole way and I’m glad that he did,” says Jordan. “It was really brilliant to work with him as an actor because his commitment was extraordinary and beyond acting in a way.”
With Farrell cast, Jordan was adamant that the title role be played by an unknown actress. “There’s an enormous amount of pressure to get a big name star to sell the film internationally but I wanted someone who was largely unknown,” he says. “I looked at a number of eastern European films including Polish, Russian and Romanian movies. I saw a movie called TRADE, which was set in Mexico City and featured Alicja Bachleda. She seemed perfect for the role. She had both this otherworldly dreamy quality and a startling voluptuousness and sensuality at the same time. She turned out to be an amazing actor.”
Bachleda immediately reacted to the script and Jordan’s vision. “It’s such a wonderful, tender story about love and people from very different worlds with difficult pasts,” she says. “They are both now dealing with a new dream reality, both are so hungry for some beauty in their lives that sometimes they lie to themselves or try to believe the dream, that things can be changed.”
Portraying the elusive Ondine proved a challenge. “There’s a certain amount of illusion to her character so she’s a bit difficult to talk about,” Bachleda says. “People believe she is a certain thing and she believes that this transformation is possible so she lives that dream as well. I don’t want to reveal too much about the character so I will just say that she is somebody who wishes and hopes to be loved and be cared for, something that she has never experienced in her life. Now she has that chance. So in a way it’s a story about dreams coming true.”
Farrell was impressed by his co-star’s ability and application. “Alicja’s really smart, has a lot of craft and works very hard,” he says. “The film opens with my character, Syracuse, pulling up his nets and there’s a woman in the nets lying amid a bed of mackerel and leaping tuna. It reads beautifully on the page and then on the day you see Alicja getting her skin chafed from this cold, wet twine and all these mackerel and tuna flying about and it’s freezing out in the Irish sea. It’s certainly not glamorous at all but there wasn’t a single whimper of disgruntlement from Alicja.”
The other new face is Alison Barry, the ten-year-old from Cork who plays Syracuse’s daughter, the precocious and confident Annie. Although she needs weekly dialysis treatment and is occasionally confined to a wheelchair, Annie is an indomitable and feisty spirit, someone who is wise beyond her tender years. She dearly loves her dad and strikes up a close and loving relationship with Ondine. “Annie has kidney failure and she’s not that popular,” says Alison. “She’s a bit lonely so when Ondine comes along it’s like a real friend for her, somebody who understands her. Annie’s life is hard because her mum is an alcoholic and her parents have split up. It is hard for her trying to keep everything together but I think she is a smart, confident little girl.”
“It is true that actors are born and Alison Barry seems to be born in the complete shape,” says Stephen Rea, who plays the town priest. “She’s wonderful.”
Ondine (2010)
Directed by: Neil Jordan
Starring: Colin Farrell, Alicja Bachleda, Tony Curran, Stephen Rea, Dervla Kirwan, Alison Barry, Emil Hostina, Marion O’Dwyer, Norma Sheahan, Stephen Rea, Brendan McCormack, Mark Doherty
Screenplay by: Neil Jordan
Production Design by: Anna Rackard
Cinematography by: Christopher Doyle
Film Editing by: Tony Lawson
Costume Design by: Eimer Ni Mhaoldomhnaigh
Set Decoration by: Judy Farr
Art Direction by: Mark Lowry
Music by: Kjartan Sveinsson
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some violence, sensuality and brief strong language.
Distributed by: Magnolia Pictures
Release Date: June 4, 2010