Film review: The Shipping News (From Stroud News and Journal)

Film review: The Shipping News

IT IS a wise child that knows his own father. However if that father is a bully more often than not the child becomes emotionally inadequate. Wise children who are bullied by their peers will hopefully learn from the experience but from a parent the damage is so ingrained it can affect the rest of their lives.

In The Shipping News Kevin Spacey brilliantly portrays a man who considers himself third-rate and so has no self- respect, all because of his destructive upbringing.

Based on E Annie Proulx's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, we journey through Quoyle's (Spacey) self-discovery in a painfully sad and at times comically charming way. That said, if this is a portrait of the contemporary family then Lord help us all.

With a terror of water brought on by his father's cruel swimming lessons Quoyle's adult life has continued on a downward spiral of disillusionment. Having had a series of humdrum jobs he eventually gets work as an ink-man for the Poughkeepie News in upstate New York.

When he meets sexy predator Petal Bear (Cate Blanchett) he is captivated. She exemplifies everything that is missing from his boring life. They marry, have one month of passion followed by six years of misery and produce a daughter Bunny (The Grainer Triplets).

Petal undermines Quoyle at every turn, which is exacerbated by Bunny's frustration with him and her growing fascination with her slutty, boozy mother. Petal is then killed in a car accident.

Around this time Quoyle finds a message on his answer phone saying: "It's time for your mother and me to put an end to it." Good gracious, can things get grimmer? Oh yes.

After he has returned home with his father's ashes he has an unexpected visitor.

His father's half-sister Aunt Agnis (Judi Dench) is keen to collect her brother's ashes as she has an extremely unconventional plan for them - this is well worth looking out for.

Seeing Quoyle's grief - he strangely adored the appalling Petal - Agnis persuades him to return with her to the ancestral dilapidated saltbox house in Newfoundland.

This move opens a new life for Quoyle and Bunny. He discovers a family background of piracy, murder, incest and rape, while finding friendship, love and his self-worth. Bunny finds she has a Newfoundland gift, sixth sense, which is referred to as "being sensitive."

Master of the thought-provoking theme, Swedish director Lasse Hallstrm (The Cider House Rules and Chocolat) has brought us another little gem. With his usual gentle touch he has captured the rugged magic of Newfoundland and the subtle individual characters who inhabit it.

Like A Beautiful Mind there is very little to criticize about The Shipping News except Hallstrm's interpretation of Quoyle, which is one of a nice-looking warm-hearted loveable soul. E Annie Proulx on the other hand writes in her book that he has "a Head shaped like a Crenshaw, no neck, reddish hair ruched back.

Features as bunched as kissed fingertips. Eyes the color of plastic. The monstrous chin, a freakish shelf jutting from the lower face, to say nothing of his great damp loaf of a body that is buried under a casement of flesh."

However I have to concede that this description may well not have appealed to the masses. Needless to say Dench is as outstanding as Spacey, but all the smaller parts are impressive, with the exception of Cate Blanchett who is made to look like a transvestite.

After Rhys Ifans magic performance as Spike, the unusual sex symbol of Notting Hill, he has been in far too many dreadful productions, the worst being Rancid Aluminium. So it is pleasing to see his delightful interpretation of Nutbeem, an unsuccessful adventurer who befriends our hero.

Julianne Moore as Wavey Prowse, a gentle local widow with a slow-witted son, is also an utter delight.

For many The Shipping News may be too slow. However, if you enjoyed Hallstrms last two ventures I am confident you will take to this starker, but equally moving production about people with very weird names who think they don't deserve to be loved.

Clare Shepherd 9/10