Hear My Song

A film set in Liverpool. Micky O'Neill runs a club. In an Irish neighbourhood, and business is bad. The names he books are false. He brings in impersonators of known performers and presents them as though they were real. One day he finds a name. Someone called Franc Cinatra. The house is full. The man goes on and it is a disaster. Micky's reputation is finished. His girlfriend Nancy leaves him. He is looking for a way out. A name comes to him: Josef Locke. Locke was a real tenor. He was very famous in Britain in the fifties and one day disappeared; he fled to Ireland over a tax debt and never came back. Nobody has seen him for years. Micky goes to Ireland. He tries to find him. From there the film is a story of searching. A country town, a bar, a farm and a name. He finds him. The problem is that Locke does not want to come back. There is a connection with Nancy's mother, Cathleen. She loved Locke when she was young and when he went everything was left unfinished. Micky uses it. What the narrative is interested in is not music but return: its idea is that the only way to persuade the man is to remind him of the person he left thirty years ago. The narrative mixes fact and invention. Josef Locke really lived and really left the country over tax; the rest is made up. The tone is light and warm. The narrative runs like a tale and claims no realism. The last scene is a concert. The song carries the film's title. Ned Beatty plays Locke. The songs were sung not by the actor but by a tenor. Adrian Dunbar plays the lead and co-wrote the screenplay. Peter Chelsom directed; it is his first film. Ned Beatty, Adrian Dunbar, Tara Fitzgerald, Shirley Anne Field and David McCallum are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes 1990s British comedy and musical narratives. Who it is not for: anyone looking for realism; the narrative leans hard on coincidence and the tone is deliberately fabular.