Philomena **** (2013, Judi Dench, Steve Coogan, Sophie Kennedy Clark, Barbara Jefford, Mare Winningham) – Movie Review

Sacked from the BBC News, Martin Sixsmith, a real-life world-weary political journalist is approached at a party by a young woman, who asks him to investigate the story of Philomena Lee, an elderly Irish woman searching for her long-lost son. The nuns took him away from her as a baby decades ago after she became pregnant and she was forced to live without him in a convent.

Sixsmith despises the idea of doing a ‘human interest’ story. But, as he’s got nothing better to do apart from planning to write books on Russian history, reluctantly agrees to takes the story on. He meets with Philomena, hears her story and finds a newspaper publisher.

The duo now start a bit of mystery solving. She’s Miss Marple to his Poirot, I guess. What happened in the convent all those years ago? Where is the boy now? How does the movie star Jane Russell fit into the tale? It turns out that the trail starts at the convent, leads them to America, and ends at the convent.

This extremely sweet and touching story is in the safest pair of hands acting-wise with Judi Dench and Steve Coogan. There are two very fresh and lively performances here from the brilliant, perfectly cast stars. Philomena plays to all their strengths. Dench is tragic, but stoic and amusing too, full of the life force despite all life’s cruel setbacks, full of forgiveness for all of life’s crappy people and their crappy deeds. She’s the perfect epitome of old Mother Courage.

It’s tricky to work in a double act with a show-stealer like Dench, but Coogan gets by very nicely with a kind of variant on his Alan Partridge act, serious, but sarcastic and funny. One Sixsmith’s involved in then story, it turns out his cynical journalist act is only that, an act. At the end, he can’t forgive. He’ll leave that to old Mother Courage.

Coogan’s got one heck of a very nice role for himself here. He’s ensured that it is by writing it himself. Written with Jeff Pope, and based on Sixsmith’s book The Lost Child of Philomena Lee, Coogan’s intelligent, witty screenplay is aces too. This film’s quite a little triumph for Coogan. He and Pope won the Best Screenplay Award at the Venice Film Festival. Nice.

The film also won the Queer Lion award at the Venice Film Festival. I’d no idea that there were queer lions, but nice again. Very nice. Nothing I’ve mentioned so far can help you imagine why it would win an award for presenting a gay character in the best light. And I’m not helping you out. Just see the movie. I’m amazed that in a country as, er, ambivalent to gays as Italy that there would be a Queer Lion award at the Venice Film Festival. Nice.

Moving though the film is, I should add that, surprisingly maybe, it’s a whole lot of fun too. Its perky sense of humour carries a basically tragic tale to another dimension. Philomena is exuberantly directed by Stephen Frears, no doubt inspired by the subject, script and actor. And it’s easily his best work since The Queen in 2006.

Frears last worked with Dench on Mrs Henderson Presents in 2005.

It’s pleasing that the film also finds a very satisfying role for the 83-year-old Barbara Jefford. In 1965, at age 35, she became the youngest recipient of the Order of the British Empire for her distinguished work in the theatre.

Ironically, it was made by BBC Films, an arm of the same organisation that fired Sixsmith in the first place.

© Derek Winnert 2013 Movie Review

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