Film: Philomena

Judi Dench and Steve Coogan

Philomena, starring Steve Coogan and Judi Dench, lives up to all the expectations one had of it, and the five star reviews already heaped upon it. People coming out of the cinema were saying "that was a tear-jerker"; it is that AND some. It is tale of sex, sin and forgiveness, in the most unlikely combination.

I went having been told of the unpleasant scene at the end with the harsh and unforgiving nun, Sister Hildegarde. I expected it to be full of the kind of horrific condemnation of nuns, so alien to any knowledge or experience I ever had and still have of religious sisters. I knew this had been a fabrication for dramatic purposes. And it does jar.

But the whole tone of the movie is one of nostalgia, kindness versus anger, a gentle acceptance versus a lashing out. Steve Coogan plays Martin Sixsmith who had been sacked from his job as a Special Adviser during the Blair government, and was then searching for a role, for a job. He learns of the tale of Philomena Lee, an unmarried mother banished into a convent, losing her four year old son when he is taken for adoption, and 50 years later, eager to find out what has happened to him. He takes up the challenge of writing a human interest story about her search and the movie is the portrayal of this unlikely couple trekking through Ireland and Washington on the trail of the missing Anthony.

There is some very unappetising exposure of the ruthlessness of newspaper reporting - get the story, no matter what damage it might do to the human beings involved. But during their journey together, Sixsmith/Coogan does show a sympathetic side. He goes through a very real range of emotions. As a highly educated man, he is intensely irritated at the Readers Digest-reading batty and simple elderly woman, wittering on about the romantic novel she's just read, when they are about to go into Club Class on a British Airways flight to Washington. His choice of reading material is Russian history. The irritation turns to intense sympathy, and then to fury on her behalf, and finally to complete bafflement at her, to him, astonishing and continued belief in God and willingness to accept and forgive. Perhaps less astonishing is Philomena/Judi Dench's complete believability as this very simple woman; as always, she glows with the inner conviction of her character, which for its illogicality, becomes even more powerful. She enjoyed the sex, is convinced it was a sin, for which she paid heavily; that was then. And now, without making it a cliche, she is "moving on".

What came across to me was that there is nothing so important as forgiveness; that's a powerful thought to take away from a movie on a Saturday night .