Evelyn

A drama set in Ireland. Desmond Doyle is a painter. His wife leaves and he is left with three children; the work is irregular, there is no money, and Christmas is coming. The state steps in. The law is plain: children with no mother whose father cannot care for them alone are placed in church schools. A court order is made and the three children are taken. Desmond applies to get them back. The answer is this: their return requires the signature of both parents, and the mother is nowhere. From there the film is a legal fight. A solicitor, a barman and a professor of law help him; the case goes to the high court and rests on an article of the constitution. What the narrative is interested in is not private drama but law: a father being unable to ask for his own child back is not one person's decision but the result of a written rule, and the film takes aim at the rule. The side line is with the children. Evelyn stays at the school and what she sees there is the narrative's second weight. The source is real. Desmond Doyle's case was heard in Ireland in the 1950s and the outcome changed how children were placed in the country. Pierce Brosnan plays Desmond and is also one of the producers. Aidan Quinn, Julianna Margulies, Stephen Rea and Alan Bates are in the cast. Bruce Beresford directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes courtroom drama drawn from real cases. Who it is not for: anyone expecting hardness; the film softens its subject and its tone is close to a family picture.