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Maire (Connie Nielsen) brings home Tomas (John Bell), a “runt of the litter,” in the adoption drama “A Shine of Rainbows.” |
Vic Sarin’s “A Shine of Rainbows” won’t be raking in the cash at this weekend’s box office. It lacks popular A-list stars, operates on a minimal marketing budget and offers a subject that doesn’t exactly scream date movie.
It’s just a quiet, slowly engaging domestic drama with a good heart, told with sincerity, and elevated by a trio of excellent performances.
The story begins in an Irish orphanage where a little lad named Tomas (John Bell, an open wound of compassion and sympathy) suffers daily abuse meted out by class bullies, unabated by the priest and nuns.
Tomas’ life takes a drastic change when he is abruptly adopted by Maire (Connie Nielsen), a beautiful and outgoing young woman. She sweeps the boy away to the stony Corrie Island off the Irish coast. (The transition from the dark and colorless orphanage to the color-bursting island feels a bit ham-handed, but it still works.)
Maire’s self-sufficient husband Alec (Chicago’s own Aidan Quinn, a model of restrained, raging emotion) can’t hide his dismay at Maire’s choice of his new son.
Tomas is constantly terrorized by people and new things. He hides out in the shed rather than meet the neighbors from the nearest farm. He seems lost and incapable of handling the slightest responsibility.
“Why did you have to pick the runt of the litter?” Alec coldly says to Maire.
Only minutes into the movie, Nielsen has already answered that question by laying out Maire’s character in efficient and precise detail. She didn’t choose the boy she needed. She chose the boy who needed her. (Read more…)