I spend a great deal of thought on faith. I examine its objects. I see it as its own entity sometimes. I wonder whether it is a lens or a creative force, a reflection of truth beyond our reach or an idol to an unknowable God. At times, whether the effect is intentional of corollary, a movie places me between the cold edge of history and the whisper of hope.
The tale of Ondine begins when an Irish fisherman pulls a woman up in his nets. She is beautiful, speaks with a foreign accent, and sings mysterious melodies that put fish in his nets.
The characters in the fisherman's town build an elaborate mythology around the woman, "Ondine," who plays to their stories with a quiet grace, seeming to prefer their versions to her reality. But the darker edges of their stories reflect a history that draws a family into a collision between a thread of hope and the shards of their broken lives.
Ondine, in its final act, leaves slivers of its own mythology intact, and it seems to praise the power of myth even as it shatters it. Here, it suggests is where your myths fall short, and here is where they stand.
To me, a faith-hounded viewer, this film and the life it enters offers room to hope and wonder despite the incompletions that our histories would wield against belief.
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