Simply Perfect

Absolutely Fantastic

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

I'll give 9.3ish out of 10 for this movie. This movie was a great movie, it had good story line, good twist, good actors and good insights. However, I could easily see the low budget filming style and movie itself doesn't contain that much fanciness. One good thing about this movie is that, even though it was a low budget movie, it still had great story that covered the low budget of this movie.If this movie was a blockbuster and Hollywood made, it could've been a popular movie, however it wasn't like that, it was a low budget and non popular movie.Even though this is not a popular movie, I think that this movie deserve to be a popular movie because it was great movie. It really had strong story and I think the actors were amazing too. I would, if I can, recommend this movie to other people because I think people should watch this.This movie was one of those twisted ending movie that made me felt kind of surprised at the end. This movie was peaceful, and happy throughout the movie. However, some parts were scary too.

Fisherman Syracuse (Colin Farrell) pull out a half-drowned Ondine (Alicja Bachleda) from his net. His daughter Annie is sick living with his ex-wife Maura. He lets Ondine stay in his late mother's cottage. Her singing seems to help with his catch. Annie starts to believe that Ondine is a selkie.Neil Jordan has married a grungy indie with a sexy magical fable. The stark rundown harbor town contrast with the sexual fantasy being hinted at. It doesn't always blend together. It's a moody affair that doesn't completely work. I definitely wanted it to go harder into the fantasy realm but it seems intent on grounding it with the grungy real world.

"The truth is not what you know. It's what you believe."This is a movie about a myth that materializes in reality, hope that finds its way through despair. A movie that will restore your faith in the imaginary and will leave you believing that we are re-living our favorite childhood fairy tales everyday but with different details. This is a movie about hope and happiness; hope that favors only the strong, and happiness that needs courage, persistence and belief. And as the priest tells Syracuse, it is always easier to fall into misery because it does not require much effort. It's happiness that needs working at. Everyday, unlimited opportunities of happiness knock on our door but we foolishly waste them or abandon them halfway because of our crippling sense of reality, cowardice, or lack of faith.Ondine is about a former alcoholic Irish fisherman, Syracuse, who fishes out of the water a woman whom his sick daughter believes to be a Silkie, a mythological creature with magical powers that lives as a seal in the water and sheds off its skin on land. Throughout his journey to uncover the true identity of the woman, to know whether she belongs to the real or the imaginary world, the fisherman (played well enough by Colin Farrell) discovers what it takes to deserve happiness.Alicja Bachelda was beautiful as Ondine. Her body and facial features truly give you the feeling that she belongs to a different world. The film is visually beautiful as well, except for a few extremely dim lit scenes which I believe were done so on purpose to juxtapose the gruesomely 'real' with the supposedly 'imaginary.'

Ondine had so much going for it: Neil Jordan, Colin Farrell, Stephen Rea, the southwest coast of Ireland, the selkie myth, the complexity of modern Ireland. But the film was surprisingly poor. It starts off very promising, and that promise is a film that offers an interesting mix of fairy tale and realism. But the mix gets muddled about halfway through, and the last twenty minutes are ridiculously poor. The scenery is beautiful. Colin Farrell at his most handsome. The soundtrack is lovely. But the acting, across the board, is mediocre -- primarily, I think, because the screenplay just doesn't hold up. But I also think the little girl is weak, and woman who plays Ondine is just vacuous, not mysterious. I forced myself to watch it a second time, just in case I just came to it with false expectations, and found it to be worse the second time around. Once you know the ending, you can see that the earlier scenes don't add up: they were "tricks" that the film plays on you.