esrosedotblog

Today's film was

Philomena (2013)

Very touching story of a woman who goes to America to find her birth son which was adopted away when she was an unwed mother. The catholics again. Gone berserk.

The story is pretty well known. So I won't go over it here.

Judy Dench and Steve Coogan. She the woman looking for the son, he the investigative reporter that has to help her out to get a story and re-rail his career.

The film is about the two of them. A study of contrasts and an opportunity for both actors to shine. Which they do.

At bottom, this is a tearjerker, but a very good one. Nothing wrong with that.

The son, as it turns out, was gay and died of AIDS but his life story becomes apparent through the love of his partner who resolves the long mystery about the son's life. What happened, how did he live, what did he do?

An irony is that the son was one of those republican reagan gays, a closet case.

This goes without much comment but, of course, it was not lost on me nor was it lost in the story. He may have gone and had a happy life but he was also closeted to the end.

This was also about the irish catholic child business. Nuns who sold babies of "sinful" mothers and all. A terrible sinful story.

I will give this one a 4 out of Netflix5.

That's him in the photo. He is real. So is Sister Hildegard also in the photo. The story about this is here. They deny it all.

They did bury him in his orphanage graveyard.

Here is Dench and Coogan in the film.

Labels: films