MOVIE REVIEW : A Contrived Core Spoils Sweet ‘Miracle’

“The Miracle” is like a fine gold pocket watch with a plastic mainspring. It looks elegant, all the appurtenances are in place, but at the heart of the matter everything is not as it should be.

The best thing about “The Miracle” (Westside Pavilion) is that it marks a return to form for writer-director Neil Jordan. After making a trio of films in his native Ireland, including the magical “The Company of Wolves” and the eclectic Bob Hoskins romantic thriller “Mona Lisa,” Jordan allowed himself to be lured to Hollywood, where he made two features, “High Spirits” and “We’re No Angels,” that did little to enhance his reputation.

With “The Miracle,” Jordan not only left Hollywood spiritually, he left it physically as well, returning to his home town of Bray, a seaside resort just north of Dublin. His Bray is a moody, magical place, realistic but not quite real, where there’s no telling exactly what will happen or what anything that does happen really means.

Spending the summer here are two (inevitably) bored teen-agers, Jimmy and Rose. Her dad is a golf-obsessed snob, his (veteran Irish actor Donal McCann) a binge-drinking, comically tormented saxophone player, so both kids are pretty much left to their own devices for the duration.

Played by a pair of unknowns, Niall Byrne and Lorraine Pilkington, Jimmy and Rose are both literary romantics, prone to walking around the town, commenting on the unfolding human comedy and weaving delightfully witty riffs about total strangers. A stolid man eating his dinner alone, for instance, calls forth the pronouncement that “the drabness of his life was so complete as to have its own fascination.”

As recited by Byrne and Pilkington, neither of whom have ever acted before, the wit of these lively, arch remarks couldn’t be more pleasing. Even though they very maturely assure each other that they’re “too friendly to be lovers, too close to be friends,” as a couple they are enormously engaging.

Into their world, by train from Dublin, to be precise, comes Renee (Beverly D’Angelo), a classic woman of mystery. Dressed to kill in sunglasses, a tailored suit and a distracted look, Renee is the perfect subject for the fantasies of Jimmy and Rose. Is she looking for “threads of a lost love”? Or maybe she’s “killed her husband, only she didn’t mean to, but it turned into the perfect crime.” Clandestinely at first, then openly, they begin to follow her, determined to find out her story.

Much of the way Jordan chooses to tell his story is more than satisfying. He counterpoints the search for Renee with time spent in a visiting circus, a gently grotesque place that shows off Philippe Rousselot’s atmospheric cinematography and the inventive production design of Gemma Jackson (who did the exceptional “Paperhouse”).

The saxophone-heavy jazz score by Anne Dudley (featuring solos by Courtney Pine) is equally rich and involving. And Jordan himself, who punctuates his story with vivid dream sequences, shows precisely the ease and control as a director that has been missing from his Hollywood efforts.

What, then, is the problem? Well, it seems that Renee does have a story to tell, and--as can be guessed by anyone who picks up on the fact that the book she is reading, “Night of A Thousand Eyes,” is by Cornell Woolrich, the poet laureate of fantastical coincidences--it is far from an ordinary one.

And while that in itself might be OK, Jordan has structured the film in such a way that the audience knows her story way, way, way before Jimmy and Rose find it out, and watching them all operate at cross purposes for what seems like forever not only strains credulity, it is enervating to sit through. Even a completely charming ending can’t alter the fact that, successfully poetic though much of “The Miracle” (Times-rated Mature) is around the edges, it’s simply too contrived at its core to be as successful as it initially promises to be.

‘The Miracle’

Beverly D’Angelo: Renee

Donal McCann: Sam

Niall Byrne: Jimmy

Lorraine Pilkington: Rose

A Palace Promenade production, released by Mirimax Films. Director Neil Jordan. Producers Stephen Woolley, Redmond Morris. Executive producer Nik Powell. Screenplay Jordan. Cinematographer Philippe Rousselot. Editor Joke Van Wijk. Costumes Sandy Powell. Music Anne Dudley. Production design Gemma Jackson. Running time: 1 hour, 37 minutes.

Times-rated Mature (adult themes).