(2010) A week-long literary festival takes place in the seaside town of Cobh in Cork County, Ireland, where Michael Farr (Ciarán Hinds), a recently widowered woodworking teacher, assists with chauffeuring authors to and fro. First he brings best-selling author Nicholas Holden (Aiden Quinn), full of himself with complaints and conceit, to the conference center, followed by Lena Morrell (Iben Hjejle), a writer of ghost fiction, whose most recent publication is The Eclipse.

Michael lives with his two children, Sarah, 14, and Thomas, 10. His father-in-law Malachy, who resides in a home for the elderly, appears to Michael as a phantom in his home and once beside him in the car.

Eager to see Lena again after an earlier one-night affair ("I'm haunted by that night"), Nicholas, who's married, suggests upon their reunion at a restaurant that they live for the moment for the next few days, but Lena, the never-wed mother of an 18-year-old, politely replies: "I can't do this."

During a reading from her novel, Lena speaks of the brain splitting when one first perceives a ghost, attempting to separate reality from the fantastic. Complimenting her honesty in writing about real specters, Michael asks Lena if an apparition of someone still living can haunt.

When Michael - showing Lena the local scenery (including the old graveyard where both his parents and his wife are buried, though he denies the latter's being there) and listening to her relate her first encounter with the supernatural (at eleven in Italy with her parents, visited by a child's spirit) - appears to Nicholas like an eclipse between himself and Lena, he angrily accuses the local man of stalking her. Easily spooked, Lena desires someone with her at night.

Perhaps intended to create a deeper sense of mystery, leaving too many details without a clue to their significance only adds to the confusion in an uneven attempt at juxtaposing disquieting tenderness with stark moments of horror throughout director/writer Conor McPherson's adaption of "Tales from Rainwater Pond," a short story by Billy Roche (who has the role of Jim Belton, the director of the festival). The strategy of merging the ghost dreams into the triangle of relationships only manages to punctuate mundane, prosaic stretches with startling, scary exclamation points.

After a particularly dreadful encounter with a ghoulish wraith in his wardrobe and an even worse spectacle when he goes to Malachy's room, Michael drives out early in the morning in hopes of having Lena's sympathetic ear, only to find Nicholas there.

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Copyright © 2011 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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