DIRECTED BY

Klaus Härö

STARRING

James Cosmo, Brid Brennan, Catherine Walker, Nora-Jane Noone, Aidan O’Hare, Bob Kelly, Molly McCann, Nova Farrelly, Carol O’Reilly, Ciara Fallon, Shane McCarthy and Shane G. Casey

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SYNOPSIS

A retired sea captain and his daughter must reassess their strained relationship after he begins a new romance with a widowed housekeeper.

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My Sailor, My Love is a romantic drama written by Jimmy Karlsson and Kirsi Vikman, and is directed by Klaus Härö. The film focuses on Howard, a retired sea captain who struggles to take care of himself as he lives alone. He is a source of frustration for his long-suffering daughter Grace, a nurse who is struggling to maintain her own wellbeing as she tries to look after her fathers, so she hires Annie to be his housekeeper, to cook and clean for him. Annie has no tolerance for Howard’s curmudgeonly personality…until mutual respect grows into a fondness that starts to feel like a threat to Grace.

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Shot on location on Achill, the film certainly captures the beauty of the location, which helps heighten the whirlwind romance between Howard and Annie, with wonderful cinematography from Robert Nordström. Making his first English-language feature, Klaus Härö’s direction is very good here in capturing the delicacy’s of human relationships. Speaking of relationships, I really liked about the story is how Karlsson and Vikman’s script makes you believe that the film will primarily focus on the love story between Howard and Annie, but it also tackles the complexities of fractured relationships, particularly that of father/daughter Howard and Grace. We can see that Grace is mentally and physically drained from not only looking after father Howard, but also her mother when she took ill. The film makes it appear that Grace’s demeanour and tone to her father and, especially, his relationship with Annie, as cold but as the film progresses we get to learn about her history with her father and see that not everything is as black and white as it appears.

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James Cosmo gives a captivating performance as Howard, a man who initially starts off belligerent, but we get to see his softer, gentle side when he’s around Annie. Brid Brennan gives a great performance as the warm Annie, a woman who isn’t as meek as she appears, not afraid to stand up to Howard’s hostility and call him out on it. Catherine Walker certainly impressed me the most with her performance as Grace. On paper and during the course of the film, Howard’s daughter could easily appear as the ‘villain’ of this story, but Walker’s performance and what we learn about Grace later in the film, she certainly makes her character layered than she initially appears to be. There’s a particular sub-plot that I wish we got a few extra minutes on, as it was of particular importance to one character’s journey, but overall the story worked well for me.

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VERDICT

My Sailor, My Love is not only a film with an interesting love story, but also has an interesting father/daughter story, looking at the complexities of both. Wonderfully shot, the film is also helped by strong performances from James Cosmo, Brid Brennan and Catherine Walker.

★★★½

SIGNATURE ENTERTAINMENT WILL RELEASE MY SAILOR, MY LOVE IN UK CINEMAS ON THE 10TH MARCH 2023. YOU CAN BOOK TICKETS FOR SCREENINGS HERE.