Three films from the 2010s featuring Saorise Ronan

Violet & Daisy (2013); Brooklyn (2015); The Seagull (2018)

Note: These notes contain spoilers.

Violet & Daisy (2013)
Written and directed by Geoffrey Fletcher

My goal was to see if this movie from the end of Saoirse Ronan's teenaged years gave her a chance to exhibit, or at least hint at, the wonderfully emotional and joyous actress she became a few years later in Greta Gerwig's "Lady Bird" and "Little Women."

A kind of exploitation film a la Tarantino, this movie's premise is that a couple of manic pixie dream girls (Alexis Bledel and Saoirse Ronan, respectively, in the title roles) are professional assassins. Sort of like Charlie's Angels, they're run by an unseen dispatcher. They show up in odd little track suits marked by the numbers 8 and 9, respectively, that denote their seniority in the organization. After an introductory sequence in which they dress as pizza delivery nuns, they receive an assignment to rub out a minor criminal, no name given, played by James Gandolfini. Then, like every Tarantino movie, this film descends into a morass of posing, supposedly clever talk, and story beats that arrive with the predictable punctuality of Swiss trains.

I don't know why someone would try to make a movie in the Quentin Tarantino mode (and that includes Tarantino himself, most of all). He made one great movie ("Pulp Fiction," 1994) and everything after that has been guided by two impulses: repeating the same tone, jokes, and cartoon violence in film after film, and contempt for the audience. So I wasn't very happy to see this movie using the same template.

Ronan, playing the apparently younger and less experienced of the two pint-sized assassins, comes off as a faux-naïf, and doesn't display much range. Her best moments are when she's listening to the Gandolfini character. But when she speaks, it's without conviction. The only real reason to see this movie is Gandolfini himself, a pro as an actor. (This is one of his last roles. In fact, I could swear another actor voices some of his lines in the film's middle section.) If you're looking for the Saorise Ronan who flowers in the Gerwig films, skip it.

Brooklyn (2015)
Directed by John Crowley

One of many historical films Saoirse Ronan has appeared in, "Brooklyn" features her as a young adult in early 1950s Ireland named Eilis ("eye-lish;" Amazon Prime's X-Ray feature says that this is a Gaelic version of Elizabeth). Her priest has arranged, through a colleague in the U.S., to send her to Brooklyn, New York. No explanation is offered for why she has been chosen to go, or why she agreed to, instead of her older, fully grown sister Nancy.

But across the pond she sails, walking into a rooming house and a job the local priest has arranged for her. Conquering homesickness, she meets a young man at a dance, a guileless, humble plumber who falls in love with her. To improve herself, she learns bookkeeping at community college. When her best friend back in Ireland is to marry, she goes back to witness it, but there she is drawn back into the life of her home town and barely escapes it at the end.

Here the script (by novelist and screenwriter Nick Hornsby, based on the novel by Colm Tóibín), does a very neat thing. At the beginning Eilis worked as a shop clerk for Miss Kelly, a bitter, bullying old woman. When she returns to her home town, everyone seems to conspire to keep her from returning to Brooklyn and the young man who secretly married her before her trip back to Ireland. She's dragged to a dance where she meets a local fellow, Jim (Domhnall Gleeson), who promptly falls for her; she's swept into a job as a bookkeeper for a local firm. Just when it seems like she'll be too weak to resist everything pulling on her to stay, an encounter with Miss Kelly, who is just as vicious and cutting as ever, wakes her up. She buys a ticket for a return ship voyage that very day.

Believable as a teenager who is, at most, 18 in "Violet and Daisy," two years later Ronan appears grown up. She has more gravitas than in "Violet" but is more ethereal than she is four years later in "Little Women" (I don't know if Alcott gives a date for Jo's birthday, but in Ronan’s hands she's definitely an earth sign.) Here she's much more awkward, even a little chilly, though she blooms when in love. She appears generally luminous throughout the film. Light reflects and refracts from her face, giving it an inward glow. If Saoirse Ronan has a characteristic pose, the camera is slightly lower than her chin and she's looking into the distance with an unsmiling, resolute expression.

Except for that Miss Kelly, every other character in the film. whether Irish or American, is kind and well-meaning. There is no villain, no violence, and hardly a raised voice. This is a film you could show to your grandmother without hesitation and she would enjoy it. That's not to say it's childish or dull. It's just a simple, straightforward romantic movie, untainted by the evil of the world, and goodness knows there's always room for that lovely image of life, false as it is.

The Seagull (2018)
Directed by Michael Mayer

I'm embarrassed to say that I have no previous knowledge of the work by Chekhov. I've neither read it nor seen it performed; I haven't even seen another film version. So I'm simply going to take this film at face value.

There are a bunch of people at a country house where they gather every summer, I gathered. Some are members of the family that owns the house, some are their lovers, employees, or neighbors. Because you, the reader, are more likely to be familiar with the Chekhov play, I won't attempt to describe the tangled relationships, except to say that the main theme is that all the main characters love someone else than the person who loves them. An aspiring playwright, young Konstantin (Billy Howle) loves Nina (Saoirse Ronan), who stars in a production of his attempt at a radical play. His mother (Annette Bening), a famous stage actress, mocks it and hurts his feelings badly. Her lover, a famous writer named Boris (Corey Stoll), foolishly falls for young Nina. Masha (Elizabeth Moss), a slightly older young woman, has held an unrequited love for Konstantin for years, while a schoolteacher, Medvedenko, (Michael Zegen) has just as unrequited a love for her.

Bening is, of course, terrific as the famous actress who becomes deeply insecure when her lover casts his eye on Nina. But the real standout is Elizabeth Moss, who brings rage to her role from start to finish.

The main requirement for Ronan here, at least in the film's first part, is to look luminous, and as in "Brooklyn" she is very good at that, so if you're a fan of the ethereal Saorise Ronan, this is for you. Later in the film, in an act that happens two years after the first part, she has seen a thing or two and is exhausted and facing the fact that as an actress she doesn't have much talent. With newly deepset eyes, she resembles Carol Kane in one of those roles (i.e. all of Kane's roles after "Hester Street") where she wears a ton of kohl to look like a heroin addict. It's this version of Nina that calls for Ronan to show off some real acting chops, and she doesn't disappoint. In fact, I would be willing to watch a whole movie about this haunted, disillusioned character.