The film by Judi Dench and Steve Coogan will return this evening on Arte.
By adapting a book on the delicate subject of children confiscated from their mothers by the Irish Church, Stephen Frears achieves a miracle of humanism, balance and subtlety where many others would have fallen into the traps of Manichaeism, heaviness and easy indignation.
At the basis of this social subject (which English journalists call “human interest”), there is the improbable association of two opposing characters. On one side, a woman of Irish origin (Judi Dench) who, seeing the fiftieth birthday of a son she never knew coming, decides to go looking for him. Destiny makes him meet a journalist recently fired by the BBC, and this investigation could help him bounce back. The subject interested him from the start because it was based on the scandal of the convents which, in the 1950s, collected “lost girls”and in exchange, took their children in order to sell them for adoption to rich foreigners. With the help of the journalist, Philomena's investigation will take her to America, where surprises follow one another.
Avoiding all melodramatic temptations, the film progresses like an initiatory story from which each character emerges enriched. Played by Judi Dench, Philomena is particularly endearing despite its complexity. Victim of bad Catholics, she has not lost her faith, and she uses it to temper the anger of the journalist outraged by the clergy. Steve Cooganwho is also co-producer and co-writer, finally finds a rich and nuanced role that changes him from the one-dimensional cynic that Michael Winterbottom too often tends to make him play (Filming in an English garden, A Very Englishman). With Philomena, Stephen Frears is at its best level (we think of The Queen) with an ideal mix of humor, drama and intelligence.
Gerard Delorme
Trailer:
5 reasons to love Judi Dench