This is the Sea

He's Catholic, she's Protestant, it's Northern Ireland during the tense 1994 truce -- Mary McGuckian's This Is the Sea aspires to be a contemporary Romeo and Juliet, but since its sensibility lies on the level of an Irish Spring commercial, the film adds little to our knowledge of Shakespeare or the Troubles. Malachy McAliskey (a tepid Ross McDade) works with his brother Peadar (John Lynch) selling hot dogs at a Belfast fairground. He almost literally bumps into Hazel Stokes (treacly Samantha Morton) when their sports car sets her cattle stampeding. He's a young and hot-blooded lad from the big city; she's a repressed member of a fundamentalist sect in the backwaters. Soon she's sneaking off to Belfast for "prayer meetings" -- secret trysts with her new love.

Politics complicates the religious differences: Peadar is a functionary for the IRA and Hazel's brother Jef (Marc O'Shea) works for the other side, so the tragic conclusion is no surprise. Simplistic and cliché'd -- McGuckian likes easy contrasts and water imagery -- This Is the Sea does have its dark edges, with Gabriel Byrne and Richard Harris sinister and sexy as shadowy manipulators at opposite ends of the struggle. Screens at the Kendall Square Sunday the 14th at 7 and 9:30 p.m. and Monday the 15th at 2:30 and 4:45 p.m.

-- Peter Keough

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