@ Lionsgate UK, Sony Pictures Classics, Zephyr Films & City Films Entertainment Dublin, 1967.
Other countries are coming to terms with the rise of youth culture and the sexual revolution.
Ireland, however, is in the grip of thr Catholic Church which frowns upon that sort of thing.
The Archbishop of Dublin John Charles McQuaid has a fearsome reputation, wielding huge influence over politicians for 27 years and slowing the pace of social change.
He'll remain in post for another five years.
This is the world that Thaddeus O'Sullivan's movie 'The Miracle Club' occupies.
However you wouldn't think so from this gentle comedy drama about four women who go on a pilgrimage to the French Catholic grotto of Lourdes.
Kathy Bates, Maggie Smith, Agnes O'Casey and Laura Kinney are the four Dublin women wrestling with their own personal struggles.
@ Lionsgate UK, Sony Pictures Classics, Zephyr Films & City Films EntertainmentMark O'Halloran is their priest who accompanies them along with a young mute boy played by Eric D Smith.
Stephen Rea, Niall Buggy and Mark McKenna are their feckless husbands, left behind to manage at home.
As you can gather, it's very soft centred stuff and not very taxing but given the cast O'Sullivan has assembled, you'd like to think it will work smoothly.
Agnes O'Casey is Dolly Hennessy, a fashion conscious, twentysomething working class mum.
@ Lionsgate UK, Sony Pictures Classics, Zephyr Films & City Films EntertainmentMarried to Mark McKenna's George, she is a mother of two children.
However her curly haired son Daniel, played by Smith, has never spoken a word.
Dolly has set her sights, though, on winning a talent competition in the local parish hall with two tickets to Lourdes as the top prize.
The second prize is a bacon joint.
She teams up with Bates' Eileen Dunne and Smith's Lily Fox, performing as a Supremes style singing group in the contest called The Miracles.
@ Lionsgate UK, Sony Pictures Classics, Zephyr Films & City Films EntertainmentThey fare pretty well but much to their disappointment only win the bacon joint.
The boy who wins the competition with a heart tugging version of the immigration ballad 'Spancil Hill' is kind and gifts Dolly and Daniel the tickets anyway.
Eileen also wants to go to Lourdes, having discovered a lump on her breast that might be cancerous.
Rather than go to the doctor, she believes the grotto will look after her and ensure it isn't.
@ Lionsgate UK, Sony Pictures Classics, Zephyr Films & City Films EntertainmentHer husband, Stephen Rea's Frank is dead set against the notion of her leaving him and their kids for a few days but she's having none of it.
Lily has her troubles too - having lost her son in his youth.
She's also afflicted by having one leg shorter than the other.
Both of them have lost a friend, Maureen Ahearn - voiced by Brenda Fricker.
@ Lionsgate UK, Sony Pictures Classics, Zephyr Films & City Films EntertainmentThe talent contest goes ahead despite Maureen's death - the rationale being that she would have wanted it to take place and serve as her wake.
However this also leads to the return from Boston of Maureen's estranged daughter, Laura Linney's Chrissie for the funeral after a 40 year absence.
This really annoys mostly Eileen but also Lily.
We learn that Chrissie fell out with Maureen and as the film progresses the reasons for their dispute become more apparent.
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@ Lionsgate UK, Sony Pictures Classics, Zephyr Films & City Films EntertainmentNot knowing the back story, Dolly is intrigued by the returning emigrant and puzzled why Eileen and Lily are both being so arsey.
Maureen, however, had a cunning plan before she died.
She left tickets to the parish pilgrimage for Chrissie, hoping she would return to Dublin and go on it, with the visit to Lourdes leading to a healing of old wounds.
But are Eileen, Lily and Chrissie really ready to confront the past and bury the hatchet?
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@ Lionsgate UK, Sony Pictures Classics, Zephyr Films & City Films EntertainmentAnd will Dolly and Eileen's hopes of their own individual miracles be realised?
'The Miracle Club' is one of those Irish movies that seems geared primarily at an international audience.
It's pretty to look at and very light touch.
It's full of quick, working class Dublin wit but also great personal sadness - reaffirming why many left Irish shores to seek a better life elsewhere.
@ Lionsgate UK, Sony Pictures Classics, Zephyr Films & City Films EntertainmentHowever it struggles to hit the right tone, skirting some of the issues it raises and never really getting to grips with them.
Based on an idea by Dublin actor writer Jimmy Smallhorne who co-wrote the script with the British screenwriter Timothy Prager and American Joshua D Maurer, it feels like a screenplay that has gone through a few iterations, diluting its message and pulling some punches.
Linney, an accomplished actress with nothing to prove, has a role that most international viewers - especially Irish American audiences - would probably relate to.
Once a Dubliner, she's made to feel an outsider by the people she grew up with and is nursing long standing wounds
@ Lionsgate UK, Sony Pictures Classics, Zephyr Films & City Films EntertainmentHowever it's a strangely one note role and Linney understandably turns in a low wattage performance.
Bates also struggles with the part of Eileen who's full of grit but also hard to warm to.
O'Casey is more convincing as Dolly, bringing a lot of heart to the role of a young, naive mum who blames herself for her son's failure to speak.
Smith steals the show, though, as usual.
Easily nailing the Dublin accent - unlike Bates - she turns in a touching performance as a woman who in her later years knows she has bottled up her grief and has deep regret about the events that led to her son's death.
@ Lionsgate UK, Sony Pictures Classics, Zephyr Films & City Films EntertainmentO'Halloran is avuncular as their well meaning parish priest, Father Dermot.
Although you can't help feel his niceness saps the film of any desire to properly interrogate the role of the Church in creating the climate that forced Chrissie to leave.
Rea, McKenna and Buggy are saddled with pretty thin roles as husbands who struggle with being left on their own as the women head to Lourdes against their wishes.
Rea, in particular, gives his all trying to squeeze comedy out of the part of Frank but the material is just a bit too 'Last of the Summer Wine'.
@ Lionsgate UK, Sony Pictures Classics, Zephyr Films & City Films EntertainmentHazel Doupe as Eileen's daughter Cathy feels really underused.
The same is true for Fricker who provides the voice of Maureen in a scene where Chrissie reads a letter from her dead mum.
While Judith Williams' costumes and John Hand's production design get the period detail spot on, Edmund Butt's musical score is too syrupy and annoyingly intrusive.
It often leads viewers by the nose as if it doesn't trust its audience to know when the script is hitting its emotional trigger points.
@ Lionsgate UK, Sony Pictures Classics, Zephyr Films & City Films EntertainmentO'Sullivan delivers sweeping shots of Dublin and Lourdes.
However the inclusion of archive footage of 1960s Dublin jars - blending unconvincingly with Hand and Williams' handiwork.
Mostly 'The Miracle Club' feels just a bit too slight for its own good.
It's soft centred and afraid to really dive into its characters heartaches and tragedies, like a Hallmark movie you'd expect to air on a Sunday afternoon.
@ Lionsgate UK, Sony Pictures Classics, Zephyr Films & City Films EntertainmentThe film also feels curiously old fashioned and out of step with where the Ireland of today now sits.
It rolls off Irish screen clichés for international audiences to lap up and exhibits little passion as it does so.
And its denouement is mawkish and all too easy.
It may be a celebration of the Irish mammy but it's too tired to resonate.
Sometimes, even with an accomplished cast trying to breathe life into a lacklustre script, miracles don't happen.
('The Miracle Club' was released in the UK and Ireland on October 13, 2023)
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