Recent films like 80 for Brady and Book Club provide a joyous context with which to watch screen legends get meaty roles and have fun playing together. Who knew that, say, Jane Fonda and Mary Steenburgen, knew of each other, and liked acting alongside one another. Aww cute!
The downside is that because these are the filmic equivalent
of reunion tours, these types of films (as well as Wild Hogs, Old Dogs, and
Last Vegas on the male end) are devoid of conflict.
A couple of Maggie Smith films I’ve recently seen- Ladies in Lavender opposite
Judi Dench, and The Miracle Club opposite Laura Linney and Kathy Bates – deal with
meaty conflict. It’s a film about the aftermath abortion and Catholic guilt in
Ireland. This is what almost every Irish film is about, minus the ones that are
about the IRA and the civil war. Magdalene Sisters, Vera Drake, and Philomena
are examples. In all seriousness, it was a pretty big tragedy (unless you’re a “Christian”
blogger or a pandering right-wing lawmaker) wherein Irish society would often
ship away pregnant unmarried women to convents to avoid family shame. The women
would have the babies and give them up for adoption.
The film opens with Maggie Smith, Agnes O’Casey, and Kathy Bates (inexplicably
sporting a full Irish brogue) as Irishwomen joyfully singing karaoke in what
appears to be an Irish
wake for their departed friend. The trio is taken aback when a stoic Laura
Linney enters (thankfully not donning an Irish accent). She’s the daughter of
the deceased and has been estranged for the past 40 years. She exchanges some
terse words with Maggie Smith in a textbook case of passive-aggressive “I’ll
pay for the funeral” ---- “No, I’ll pay for the funeral” one-upmanship.
We soon learn that Laura Linney was a teenage preggo who was sent to the States
(thank god, because again, Linney didn’t have to do an accent), but the twist
is that Maggie’s son was doing the impregnating. Maggie’s son was in love with
her and wanted to follow Laura, but Maggie warned her it was a trap and Laura
was just using her lady parts to ensnare him into a life of domesticity. Maggie’s
son ended up living an unhappy life and committing suicide in guilt. In the interim,
Agnes O’Casey, the youngest member of the karaoke trio, also has guilt of her
own because she unsuccessfully tried to abort her baby in the bath tub and he
survived but is developmentally disabled. So we got ourselves a double dramatic
dose of abortion trauma.
One of the women has won a grand prize in a Church raffle
for a vacation for four for some sort of spiritual spa in France. Nitpick time:
Spas are spas and they rarely have a spiritual element to them. However, it
does set the stage (albeit a little artificially) for a road trip element of
reluctant bedfellows : If Laura stayed away for 40 years, you’d think she would
never voluntarily spend time with her former best friend and the women who
destroyed her true shot at love. But, the tickets were entered in the raffle before
the death of Laura’s mom, and the priest (Irish stalwart Stephen Rhea)
encourages Laura to redeem her mom’s ticket anyway. If you can get past both
those dues-ex-machinas (oh yes, and Kathy Bates’ Irish accent), then that’s the
most suspension of disbelief you’ll have to do.
The rest of the film is a well-developed relationship drama
that skillfully confronts trauma and the culture’s changing social mores. The trailer
advertises The Miracle Club as a feel-good film that might be indistinguishable from 2003's other "Old Stars Putting on a Last Hurrah" genre entries. But this is a film with dark spots that create a much richer sweetness at the end.
Note: The convention is to generally refer to characters in review by their character names and list actor names in parenthesis on first reference. I thought I'd try something different this time.
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