Mary e lo spirito di mezzanotte

The young "Mary" has travelled the length of Ireland to submit her recipe to an exclusive cookery school. They deride it as bland to the chagrin of her feisty grandmother who promises that they'll be back. It's on their lengthy drive afterwards that we discover something of the close bond between them and that she's got quite a nasty cough. Back home, her mother "Scarlett" is concerned at events that end up with the old lady in hospital with, according to the nervous "Dr. Patel", not too long to go. It's around this time that the youngster meets "Anastasia" in the woods. She is a sympathetic and slightly enigmatic soul who assures the girl that everything will be "grand" - but who is she? She knows things she shouldn't but not in a malevolent fashion. When she eventually meets granny, things begin to make a little sense as the four women travel/abscond to her abandoned childhood home in County Wexford. It does meander a little too much: there are far too many animated equivalents of establishing and beauty shots, and there isn't a great deal of jeopardy as the plot unravels rather predictably. That doesn't matter so much, though, as this adaptation of Roddy Doyle's story of family, love, life and ... death manages to hit home in a subtle and friendly fashion. The art work itself is a little two dimensional, with most of the visual emphasis on the big-eyed faces but try to stay focussed on the colcannon that you can almost smell. There's a simple charm to this story and it does leave you with a slightly warm feeling when you leave the cinema afterwards.