As Philomena's credits rolled the collective audience at my screening let out a unanimous 'ahhhh', of the oh-how-sweet variety (as opposed to the oh-the-horror variation). It's that reaction - and the fact that most of those cooing over the film were racing towards pension age - that'll keep far too many people away. It looks like a film made for my mother and your mother and, really, everyone's mother. It looks like a film by the director of the at times too placid, and TV-movie-esque, The Queen (which it is). It looks unlikely to bother anyone; but it's so much better than how it looks.
Philomena is based on a true story written by ex-journalist Martin Sixsmith, here played by a very deadpan Steve Coogan. Sixsmith is approached with a dilemma: Philomena (the perpetually award-worthy Judi Dench) has been searching for her son for 50 years, having signed him away to a nunnery when she was very young, for reasons of guilt, as well as her lack of means. Sixsmith agrees to meet Philomena and, seeing an angle for a newspaper column, grudgingly takes on the 'human interest' story. The pair travel to Ireland, America, and back, bickering mildly as they go. Now that description sounds as dry and restrained as Coogan's performance. It doesn't get across what makes the film so effective: it's an odd couple movie. Sixsmith is the tight-laced one, distant, bitter and scathing, and an atheist through and through. Philomena is the goofy one, prone to non sequiturs, a keen romance novel reader, with an unwavering belief in God. Their chemistry is so good you'll hope for a series of films with the mismatched pair. (Here I'd like to propose the title Philomena II: Philomena Strikes Again.) The circumstances that have brought them together may be dour, but the time spent with the pair never is. It is, by a long shot, the funniest film I've seen this year.
Stephen Frears, he that directed it, has an almost quintessentially TV movie themed story on his hands, but unlike some of his previous efforts Philomena is shot and acted in such a way to transcend those issues. It helps that it looks great, but more important than its looks, it helps that it has Dench and Coogan to hand, who make the story into more than just tabloid news fodder. There are evil nuns, minor conspiracies, religious differences, and other tensions besides, but Philomena manages to ground it all with humour as dry as the Sahara. Which isn't to say it's a perfect film. Stephen Frears, he that directed it, does his best to offer a counterbalance to each theme and character: religion:atheism, drama:comedy, good:evil, tabloid:high-art, and inevitably struggles to marshall all the competing elements. Is Philomena being exploited by Sixsmith or is there a balance between both their needs? A more difficult question to parse, is Frears (and Coogan and Jeff Hope, who wrote it together) guilty of the same? There's obviously no malice on their part, and Coogan and Dench's real life counterparts have given their blessing, but the film still struggles to answer those questions, and is often too forgiving of Sixsmith, pushing him towards several unlikeable acts, then letting him off the hook before he has to see them through - leaving the film's most important questions hanging unanswered. That the film is conflicted might not be so bad. In a warped way it suits the material to a tee.
Overall: 8/10
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