Dir. Richard Attenborough, UK / Canada / US, 2007, 118 mins
Cast: Shirley MacLaine, Christopher Plummer, Mischa Barton, Martin McCann
Review by Carol Allen
This is a well constructed love story that cuts between two eras: the Second World War and the early nineties. In America, in 1941, Ethel (Barton) is friends with three young airmen - Teddy, Jack and Chuck - but the one she loves and secretly marries is Teddy. When he is killed, Chuck fulfils his promise to Teddy should anything happen to him that he will look after Ethel and marries her. However, she never forgets her first love. Some fifty years later, in Belfast, where the men were stationed during the war, a young boy, Jimmy (McCann), finds a gold wedding ring bearing Ethel and Teddy's names, buried near where Teddy's plane crashed. He tracks it down to Ethel in America, now an elderly widow (MacLaine) who is still friendly with the last remaining member of the trio, Jack (Plummer). Jimmy, in his efforts to return the ring to its rightful owner, reignites the secrets of Ethel's long dead love and helps her to find a new one.
There's something slightly old fashioned but also charming and touching about the way this story is treated. It's very sweet but avoids being sentimental. The set up is complicated with a plethora of characters and situations to absorb, but it soon all becomes clear and once we've sorted out who's who and where and when they are, it makes for a satisfyingly complex plot. The background to the more contemporary scenes in Belfast being at the height of the conflict between the British soldiers and the IRA gives the story a good bite and references back effectively to the wartime scenes, which are well evoked in their atmosphere and convincing detail of air raid shelters and living for the moment when tomorrow you may be dead.
McLaine and Plummer both give assured and solid performances, as does Pete Postlethwaite as a man who is also nursing a secret, in his case from his wartime childhood, while Martin McCann as Jimmy is a really interesting new talent. The young people in the forties are engaging and touching, particularly in the wedding ceremony scene although Barton, it must be said, bears absolutely no physical resemblance to the older Ethel. Brenda Fricker as Jimmy's gran, however, is very well matched with her younger self, who in the wartime years was a bit of a fast lady. The old style romance of the story and the way Ethel and Jack cling onto emotions that they experienced fifty years previously may appeal more to older audiences, although it does make the point to younger ones that the wrinkly old man and woman in the corner once too experienced the passions of youth.
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