As a fan of watching movies without knowing anything about what is going to happen, it is my belief this comment contains spoilers.
I have never seen a movie quite like this one. Some of the scenes and situations were brilliantly crafted, and others were complete junk. The end result are brilliant scenes speckled with garbage, and the garbage scenes are very, very confused and confusing. I will explain in my plot summary that follows. All the plot summaries I had read about this movie say something completely different (read the one on imdb.com) than what I feel this movie is actually about.
This movie is the story of Agnes Browne, and her budding friendship with a neighboring woman, Marion. I suppose they knew each other before Agnes' husband's death (movie starts with the funeral), but apparently they didn't become best friends until after the funeral. Unbeknownst to Agnes, but knownst to us, her friend has cancer.
Here follows several touching scenes, brilliantly crafted, with perfect dialogue, etc...:
Agnes runs into Marion's husband, who sort of tells Agnes what is going on. Agnes tells him it's not the end of the world, and he replies, "It is for me".
Later, Marion says her one wish is to learn to drive a car, and they both are sitting in a car waiting for the instructor. He comes around to the driver's window and gesticulates in what could either be interpereted as an obscene gesture or sign language for Marion to roll the window down. The women assume the former is the case, Agnes says he wants a "w**k", and they laugh. He then asks Marion to turn the "knob", and they again laugh. The guess his name is "Dick" and are dissapointed to find out his name is Tom. They fall into absolute hysterics when he announces his full name, "Tom O'Toole".
At the beginning, Agnes has no money because she hadn't yet started getting her husband's death benefits. She is forced to borrow from a loan shark briefly. Soon after she gets her retroactive death benefits, and there is a bizarre scene where she pays him back in a lump sum and they are both ungrateful to each other. At this point, I felt it was very clear Agnes had a good amount of money, as she even bragged a little about it. Further proof of this occurs when we see Agnes and Marion go out bar hopping. Then suddenly, the next day, she cries when her 7 kids complain and she is upset she doesn't have the money to feed them all. Then, in stark contrast again, Agnes and Marion take a day off from their fruit and flower stands and go to the coast, they go shopping for expensive clothes for Agnes' daughter, they take expensive driving lessons... not exactly money problems here. All of these scenes do exist however to show us the bond of friendship that is building between these two women and again we see specs of brilliance. I thought the money problems were long since over. When one of Agnes' kids borrows 6 pounds from the earlier loan shark, the money problems mysteriously reappear when payment time comes. 6 pounds! Agnes tries to scrape up the 10 pounds owed (interest) and seemingly can't come up with that, despite the money being offered to her by a Frenchman named Pierre who is in love with her, and despite her doing several things, including selling her wedding ring! She bravely tells Pierre she refuses to be reliant on a man. Then she gets money out of nowhere from her late husband's work union, and also Tom Jones bizarrely helps save the day (making her reliant on Tom Jones, who I believe is a man).
I really like Anjelica Huston. But in this movie, you really notice her terrible attempt at an Irish accent, which faded in and out, was never really right, and was extremely distracting. Her acting at points was also very bad, as in the funeral scene at the beginning where she realizes she is at the wrong grave. There were many points where it seemed as though she was concentrating too hard on just trying to get the accent right. In other scenes she had a look on her face that seemed she was just pleased she got the accent right for a change. She produced this movie, and should have known better than to put herself in it. She should have known it needed a severe re-write before production. It makes me think she doesn't quite have the minerals to do this many jobs on one production.
I have never seen a movie quite like this one. Some of the scenes and situations were brilliantly crafted, and others were complete junk. The end result are brilliant scenes speckled with garbage, and the garbage scenes are very, very confused and confusing. I will explain in my plot summary that follows. All the plot summaries I had read about this movie say something completely different (read the one on imdb.com) than what I feel this movie is actually about.
This movie is the story of Agnes Browne, and her budding friendship with a neighboring woman, Marion. I suppose they knew each other before Agnes' husband's death (movie starts with the funeral), but apparently they didn't become best friends until after the funeral. Unbeknownst to Agnes, but knownst to us, her friend has cancer.
Here follows several touching scenes, brilliantly crafted, with perfect dialogue, etc...:
Agnes runs into Marion's husband, who sort of tells Agnes what is going on. Agnes tells him it's not the end of the world, and he replies, "It is for me".
Later, Marion says her one wish is to learn to drive a car, and they both are sitting in a car waiting for the instructor. He comes around to the driver's window and gesticulates in what could either be interpereted as an obscene gesture or sign language for Marion to roll the window down. The women assume the former is the case, Agnes says he wants a "w**k", and they laugh. He then asks Marion to turn the "knob", and they again laugh. The guess his name is "Dick" and are dissapointed to find out his name is Tom. They fall into absolute hysterics when he announces his full name, "Tom O'Toole".
At the beginning, Agnes has no money because she hadn't yet started getting her husband's death benefits. She is forced to borrow from a loan shark briefly. Soon after she gets her retroactive death benefits, and there is a bizarre scene where she pays him back in a lump sum and they are both ungrateful to each other. At this point, I felt it was very clear Agnes had a good amount of money, as she even bragged a little about it. Further proof of this occurs when we see Agnes and Marion go out bar hopping. Then suddenly, the next day, she cries when her 7 kids complain and she is upset she doesn't have the money to feed them all. Then, in stark contrast again, Agnes and Marion take a day off from their fruit and flower stands and go to the coast, they go shopping for expensive clothes for Agnes' daughter, they take expensive driving lessons... not exactly money problems here. All of these scenes do exist however to show us the bond of friendship that is building between these two women and again we see specs of brilliance. I thought the money problems were long since over. When one of Agnes' kids borrows 6 pounds from the earlier loan shark, the money problems mysteriously reappear when payment time comes. 6 pounds! Agnes tries to scrape up the 10 pounds owed (interest) and seemingly can't come up with that, despite the money being offered to her by a Frenchman named Pierre who is in love with her, and despite her doing several things, including selling her wedding ring! She bravely tells Pierre she refuses to be reliant on a man. Then she gets money out of nowhere from her late husband's work union, and also Tom Jones bizarrely helps save the day (making her reliant on Tom Jones, who I believe is a man).
I really like Anjelica Huston. But in this movie, you really notice her terrible attempt at an Irish accent, which faded in and out, was never really right, and was extremely distracting. Her acting at points was also very bad, as in the funeral scene at the beginning where she realizes she is at the wrong grave. There were many points where it seemed as though she was concentrating too hard on just trying to get the accent right. In other scenes she had a look on her face that seemed she was just pleased she got the accent right for a change. She produced this movie, and should have known better than to put herself in it. She should have known it needed a severe re-write before production. It makes me think she doesn't quite have the minerals to do this many jobs on one production.