Four Letters of Love review

The Guardian

16-07-2025

Niall Williams has adapted his own international bestseller for this slushy romantic drama set in the west of Ireland, about love and destiny and dreams never given up on. For me, it pushed the bounds of absurdity and melodrama one step too far, though it undoubtedly has an audience. Something here reminded me of the romdram hits of author Nicholas Sparks, and particularly Message in a Bottle – although to be fair it should be borne in mind that Williams published his novel a year before Sparks' book came out.
Two young lives unfold in parallel, fated to be brought together. Fionn O'Shea is Nicholas Coughlan, whose civil-servant dad William (Pierce Brosnan) has an epiphany at work one day when a lozenge of sunlight is blazoned on his drab desk and he abandons his job and heads west from Dublin to pursue his new vocation of painting. It is around these parts that Isabel (played by the excellent Ann Skelly, from Joe Lawlor and Christine Molloy's Rose Plays Julie) has been traumatised by her brother's illness and is on the point of being sent away to be schooled by nuns and parted from her kindly parents – poet and schoolteacher Muiris (Gabriel Byrne) and Margaret (Helena Bonham Carter).
A strained and convoluted plot point means that John (Pat Shortt), a concerned colleague of William's, offers to buy one of his paintings to use as the prize in a poetry competition, and this painting winds up in Muiris' and Margaret's home – although the details of Muiris finding out about the competition, his deciding to enter and his presumed excitement at winning aren't made clear. Moreover the audience is not allowed a good look at the painting until the very end, to see how it brings all the cosmic forces into alignment. This top-notch cast gives it their considerable all, but to my taste the syrup content was in the end too high.
Four Letters of Love is in UK and Irish cinemas from 18 July, and Australian cinemas from 24 July.