New Girl

It really is all about Brooklyn, huh.

And I don’t mean the New York City borough but the beyond-buzzy film – starring Academy Award nominee Saoirse Ronan (The Grand Budapest Hotel, Atonement) – by up-and-coming Irish director John Crowley that beautifully captures the immigrant experience of a comely white girl.

Snide-ness aside, I thought that Brooklyn was delightful and oh-so-truthful to the general immigrant experience. As an immigrant who came to American still in my teens, as a very young young adult, I can attest to the film’s beats where the feelings of isolation, away-ness, and discombobulation are concerned, to the discovery of a new people and a strange land, and to the eventual realization that it is all gonna be A-OK. The film was written by Nick Hornby, the British author-cum-screenwriter who helped deliver Wild and An Education (both led by strong female characters and which both netted Reese Witherspoon and Carey Mulligan Best Actress Oscar nods) and he has crafted a deftly accomplished take on the Colm Tóibín novel that absolutely delights as it puts ya on Ronan’s Eilis Lacey’s properly adventurous shoes as she reluctantly, yet openly journeys from Enniscorthy, Ireland, to America in 1952.

Hornby’s script chronicles a very specific narrative that mirrors an experience that’s becoming increasingly universal: immigration is not an unheard-of concept (America – as we very well know and as we are being repeatedly reminded in a polarizing election year set against a far larger immigration crisis – is a nation built on the backs of immigrants), and it is a weighty topic of discussion these days. That Tóibín’s novel was adapted for release this year was some sort of kismet, and Crowley’s direction serves the subject matter and the particulars of Eilis’ story well.

The filmmaker and Ronan are generous with Eilis’ coming of age – with her apprehension, fears, and guilt of leaving home, and with the joys she allows herself to encounter, pursue, and, ultimately, embrace in her adopted hometown across the ocean and distance.

Virtual newcomer Emory Cohen co-stars as Tony, an Italian-American fella Eilis meets at a dance, while Jessica Paré from AMC’s Mad Men and Emily Bett Rickards from The CW’s Arrow pop up as as a couple of the more established women she encounters at work and at the boardinghouse into which she checks in upon arrival. Academy Award nominee Walters plays the boardinghouse’s strict, if caring keeper, while Oscar winner Jim Broadbent portrays Father Flood, the priest who arranges Eilis’ passage to America.

But back to Tony.

Love, as it would, is the one thing that helps Eilis cope, for, yes, it is the one thing that can help an immigrant begin to feel normal. In her case, it is romantic love. That usually helps, but it can manifest as love for your new environment or surroundings. Or your new job. Or your new friends.

This being an awards-baiting film, it had to be love-love, and it had to be Tony, and that’s where Brooklyn and its protagonist blossom into a mystery, for Eilis gets to play with fire when she’s called back to Ireland, where she meets Jim (Domhnall Gleeson, soon to be seen/heard/whatever in Star Wars: The Force Awakens), another attractive and interested young man. That encounter, the entire visit confront who she has begun to become in Brooklyn and her true mettle, and, in the end, Eilis must decide not only who she is but who she really wants to be as well.

Who she really wants to be and where.

Let Crowley and his cast led by Ronan – who so evokes a young Nicole Kidman som’in’ fierce in this one, she is so graceful – take you to Eilis’ answer. You will be happy you went along for the ride.

My Rating ****

Photo: Fox Searchlight Pictures.