Philomena

Judi Dench, Steve Coogan

Dench plays a victim of the monstrous Magdelene Sisters of Ireland who took her child and sold him to Americans fifty years ago. Now she wants to find him and is hooked up with a journalist...and off they go.

This was directed by Stephen Frears, who's given us some fine films in the past but this time relied too heavily on syrupy music swelling up at appropriate moments to cue the audience. And he seemed to be hitting the standard marks with only one minor surprise in the screenplay. I wonder what attracted him to this project.

Both players successfully created characters different from their previous work; their relationship seemed real enough with rough spots and eventual understanding. Not bad, not good...somewhere in the middle.

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