Evelyn, a new "issue" movie about a downtrodden father trying to regain custody of his three children in a landmark Irish legal battle that changed the course of Irish family law, is a film that gets the look, feel and period of its story with impeccable accuracy. What it doesn't get, however, is the richness of story, narrative and character needed to make us care. That it's a potentially dramatic true story of a family torn asunder by unforeseen and unfair circumstances, then reunited after an historic, law-changing trial, makes its shortcomings all the more frustrating.
Set in 1953, the film tells the story of Desmond Doyle, whose wife runs away with another man on Christmas day, abandoning him and their three children. Jobless and penniless, Doyle is left to fend for his three adolescent children, who include two boys and a young girl, Evelyn (a tolerable Sophie Vavasseur). After a string of unfortunate professional and personal problems, the church and state determine that it's in the children's best interest to be taken away from their father until he can again prove a viable source of emotional and financial support.
The film chronicle's Doyle's battle with "the system," booze, and himself, as he attempts to clean up and re-build his life, eventually challenging Irish family law with a hammy, crackpot group of colorful attorneys, in the hopes of achieving a seemingly impossible family reunification.
Evelyn is one of those quirky, true-to-life, "small" Irish tales we've seen so much of in the last few years. And though on the surface it's a handsome, well-made film, it's also a narrative misfire, undeveloped in its relationships and attempting to cover its considerable gaps with standard-issue courtroom theatrics and predictable conclusions that only the most naïve would find fresh.
And though Evelyn is a sincere and sometimes charming picture, it ultimately becomes a maudlin, shallow treacle, made all the more frustrating in that its heart is in the right place. The film has been made with impeccable technique and smooth direction, by veteran, Australian filmmaker Bruce Beresford (Breaker Morant, Driving Miss Daisy).
It's not that Evelyn is a bad film in any sense, just a familiar, cloying one. There are effective moments in the film, and it's certainly watchable for the duration of its running time. But being watchable and being compelling are two completely different things.
There's never any question in anyone's mind exactly where Evelyn is going to end up - if there were, would we even have a film? But predictability alone never stopped a well-directed and acted film from being a good one. Evelyn, however, suffers from the further malaise of generic characters and a simplistic, one-dimensional point of view applied to a complex and complicated family issue.
Brosnan turns in an acceptable and convincing performance, proving he's mastered the old Irish brogue and reminding you that he was also a versatile actor before he became Mr. Bond, and he's joined by a cast with radically different performance styles, often uneven in their approach to the same material.
After the superb The Man from Elysian Fields and now Evelyn, I'm warming up to Julianna Margulies, who has a nice, unforced and low-key turn as a sympathetic barmaid who takes a liking to Doyle, and turns him on to the legal advice of her brother, well-played by Stephen Rea. Aidan Quinn, who seems to be in everything Irish these days, is the eager American attorney determined to find the loophole in Irish law, and the great Alan Bates appears flamboyantly as another lawyer, lightening the film by behaving as if he'd just stepped out of a hackneyed Monty Python sketch.
And though the cast is fine, what's most irritating about Evelyn has nothing to do with Brosnan, Bates and company. Where the film missteps is that is we're never given any scenes remotely compelling or of human interest between the father and the children. Not once do they sit down and talk, play, share affection, or give us much of an idea about what binds them.
Time and again, the film expects us to bring our own feelings to the table about the unfair separation between parents and children, and fill in the emotional blanks for the lazy screenplay. What we're left with is a film that attempts to coast by on our basic, engendered sympathy toward the plight of lost parents and children, and our sense of justice of comeuppance, without ever adding anything fresh, substantive or relevant to the scenario.
The characters and their plight are simply not fleshed out on any three-dimensional canvas, and so Evelyn becomes a missed opportunity for a rich family story, instead content to become a simple "issue" movie that somewhat broadly and awkwardly attempts to address the cruel injustice of families torn asunder by religion and politics.
For example, we barely see a glint in the film of how the separation affects the children, who after losing their mother and father in near record time, reposition their young lives rather matter-of-factly in the care of oppressive Catholic schools, as if nothing more dramatic has happened than a trip to boarding school.
One very strange element of the story is that is never reconciled involves Doyle's singular fixation on retrieving daughter Evelyn, seemingly at the expense of his two young sons. As a matter of fact, through the duration of the film, it's never clear that Doyle has much interest at all in the boys and their livelihood. He's primarily fixated on Evelyn herself, as the film's title indicates, and strangely, the case seems to be wholly centered on specifically getting little Evelyn back home to her father. Much less interest, and attention is given to the boys, who share exactly the same plight. The screenplay shortchanges the boys, who are generic and interchangeable.
Narrative inconsistencies abound not only in the undeveloped family relationships, but in Doyle's personal life as well. We see him drinking here and there, though it's depicted as cultural staple and charm. Late in the film, he confesses to "giving up the drink" and gaining considerable employment, though we haven't seen evidence of either. This is shoddy writing, the kind that expects the viewer to not only take a great deal of important character information on faith, but trusts that we'll just open our hearts to the family's plight in the most generic terms.
Along the way, there are heavy doses of probably just criticism heaped on the overbearing church and state, the injustices they impose on the common man for the sake of "the law," and just how damned unfair life can be for a single, broke, alcoholic father. I actually wondered just how right or wrong the film's premise and protagonist might be, and what might actually best for the children. At least in foster care, they're guaranteed stability, food and shelter. And since Doyle never demonstrates that he's a capable father before they are taken away, what makes him the best choice to provide for them in a broken home with no money?
There are several shameless, calculated visual metaphors in place, none so embarrassing as a late courtroom moment regarding a strategically placed sunbeam (it's grandpa, didn't you know?), the absurd explanation of such vaults the movie into an uncomfortable magical realism.
I wasn't bored in Evelyn, and I wasn't moved either. And though I saw people crying in its final moments, you'd have to be awful desperate for cheap movie tears to fall for this formula treacle.
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