Four Letters of Love review: Every interior in this preposterous film suggests an Irish theme pub in 1990s Basingstoke

Irish Times

18-07-2025

Four Letters of Love
    
Director
:
Polly Steele
Cert
:
12A
Starring
:
Helena Bonham Carter, Pierce Brosnan, Gabriel Byrne, Ann Skelly, Fionn O'Shea, Imelda May, Ferdia Walsh Peelo
Running Time
:
1 hr 49 mins
Are we still bleeding doing this? Really? Are we still modelling our entertainment on a best bet of how
Americans
like to imagine us? Every interior in this preposterous
adaptation
of an admired
Niall Williams
novel
suggests an Irish theme pub in 1990s Basingstoke. Oh, to have been in the antique spinning-wheel business or the rusty bike trade when the production came to town. The script believes we are never more than a syllable away from semi-spiritual claptrap. We will get to the accents later.
If asked what the film was about – or to what the title referred – one would need to reveal Shakespearean shenanigans in the closing 15 minutes. So, for fear of spoilers, we will assume you are not asking that.
To that point, Four Letters of Love has concerned two largely parallel stories. In Dublin of the early 1970s, young Nicholas Coughlan (Fionn O'Shea) is living in uneasy suburban comfort with mum Bette (Imelda May) and dad William (
Pierce Brosnan
) when the latter has a sort of secular revelation. Sitting at his desk, William spots a rectangle of light and decides he will move from a role for which Pierce Brosnan is mildly miscast to a role in which he is grossly miscast: he will cease being a civil servant and take up life as a hairy, staff-wielding painter in the west of Ireland. You know? The sort of vaguely Druidical figure you move away from when he sidles beside you in the bus queue.
Meanwhile, on an island in that very part of the world, Muiris (
Gabriel Byrne
), poet-teacher, and Margaret (no really, it's Helena Bonham Carter), his wise wife, are going through their own school of picturesque trauma. One sad day, their son Sean (Dónal Finn) has a mysterious fit while playing the penny whistle as his sister Issy (Ann Skelly) dances merrily upon a cliff. He ends up in a wheelchair. Issy is sent off to board with nuns who, though stern, are benign enough to satisfy those people constantly whining online about how films are, these days, too mean to the sisters.
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Indeed, Four Letters seems intent on offering us an idealised portrait of Ireland in an often-miserable period. The closest thing to an avatar of modernity is Peadar (Ferdia Walsh Peelo), the low-level hell-raiser who lures Issy away from school with his motorcar and his interest in ersatz pop music. Four Letters is far too good-natured to make a monster of Peadar – he is more Cliff Richard than James Dean – but, early on, we realise Issy would be better off with someone like … oh, I don't know, maybe the thoughtful, intense, furrowed Nicholas. But how will that happen? He is in a whole other story.
[
Pierce Brosnan: 'I had no qualifications. I was really behind the eight ball – without a mother, without a father'
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]
Williams's novel has a huge following and, in print, I don't doubt the messages stand out uncompromised. Overseas viewers may be more open to a hyperglycaemic depiction of Ireland that would give the makers of Netflix Micksploitation pause for thought. As in The Banshees of Inisherin, the visuals mirror the aesthetic of John Hinde postcards, but are here unseasoned with the cruel irony that Martin McDonagh provides (whatever you think of that writer).
Little blame attaches to the cast. Brosnan, as ever in such situations, touches vowels from all 32 counties in his effort to master an Irish accent not his own. Skelly and O'Shea are stars. The admirable Olwen Fouéré, playing a near silent bystander, satisfies an apparent contractual obligation that she appear in every rural drama. Only a monster could object to the delightful pairing of Byrne and HBC (whose accent isn't too bad). Get them back together in a better film as soon as possible.
In cinemas from July 18th