REVIEW: Ondine Captivates With Magic and Mastery

Is Ondine a magical creature or a disappointingly human one? By the time Jordan (who also wrote the script) answers that question, it no longer matters, because he's already redefined what we commonly think of as magic: Ondine suggests that coincidence and magic are often the same thing. That idea is right there in the look of the movie: The picture was shot by Christopher Doyle in a shifting palette of shadowy deep blues and greens, along with those aforementioned grays -- Doyle seems to have found a thousand shades of them. In fact, once you key into them, the no-colors of Ondine are as vivid as the rainbow. Similarly, the characters do exceedingly average things that somehow take on a mystical allure: Syracuse goes shopping, in a sleepy little village store, for a dress for Ondine (he boosts a few things, too, to make his newfound riches go a little bit further). She puts it on -- it's a low-cut, ruffly little thing, pretty but undistinguished looking -- and not long afterward, she wears it when she goes swimming in the sea, fully making it her own: Damp and clingy, it ceases being a frock and becomes a Delphos gown. It's not shielding her from nature; it's soaked with nature.

In the course of his career, Jordan has certainly made a strange mix of movies, from the despairing gangster love story Mona Lisa, to the arthouse gender-bender The Crying Game, to the alternately joyful and wrenching glam-romance Breakfast on Pluto. (That's not even taking into account the flawed but weirdly effective vigilante picture The Brave One, or the smart, sharp heist caper The Good Thief.) Still, it's easy enough to make the case that Jordan is always as fascinated by surfaces as he is by what they hide. What people choose to show us of themselves is, after all, part of their identity. So why can't a person who's a woman on the outside be a mermaid on the inside? Bachleda makes us believe in that possibility: She's sexy not so much because of her nymphlike curves but because of everything her quizzical smile hides -- she plays Ondine as a woman who has perhaps only reinvented herself as a creature of myth. But what is reinvention besides a form of alchemy?

No wonder Farrell's Syracuse is alternately and simultaneously charmed by her, drawn to her and afraid of her. Around town, Syracuse is dogged by an old nickname, Circus, because in his drinking days he repeatedly played the role of the crazy loser clown. He's no longer crazy and no longer a clown, but he's still, for sure, a loser, and most of the people around him have little patience for him. He particularly exasperates the local parish priest (played by Jordan regular Stephen Rea, who's offhandedly hilarious), whom he visits now and then in the confessional. Syracuse isn't a faithful Catholic; it's just that there's no Alcoholics Anonymous in his crap town, so a priest will have to do.

As Syracuse, Farrell carries so much sadsack sorrow in his eyes that you fear nothing will ever go right for him. He's scruffy, cautious, unwilling to accept the possibility of happiness: Next to the evanescent Ondine, he's a rough-skinned, land-bound lion. But once he gets the gist of Ondine's song -- once he falls hard under her spell -- he becomes a shimmery creature too, albeit one with a five-o'clock shadow.

The worst thing a movie can try to be is magical, perhaps because we need to believe that magic just happens -- it can't be caused by lighting or camera angles or clever editing. Ondine doesn't strive for magic; quite the opposite, it insists on being quotidian. Jordan acknowledges the world as a flawed place. But he also knows that the cracks in everyday life, even the ones so fine that sunlight can't get through, are exactly where the glamour creeps in.

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