‘The Grand Seduction’

By John Lyons

BRENDAN Gleeson stars in this quiet, yet light-hearted drama about a quaint community living in a small harbour on the coast of Canada.

I hadn’t even heard of the film, but I’m a huge fan of Gleeson and decided that it would be the film that I would review this week. Going into the film I didn’t even know what genre it was.

The film revolves around Gleeson’s character Murray, a man who has spent his entire life in the harbour making a living as a fisherman. It opens with Murray giving a soliloquy-of-sorts about his father, and growing up in the harbour during happier and more prosperous times.

This starkly contrasts with the sombre reality of the present day. The harbour has fallen on some hard times and the only sign of hope for the community is the possibility of having an oil company set up a factory nearby.

Already it looked like the film was laying the breadcrumbs for a strong morality story about whether or not the locals would abandon their morals and integrity for their livelihood. It looked like ‘The Grand Seduction’ was going to be an interesting drama in the vein of Gus Van Sant’s most recent film: ‘Promised Land’, but from the opposite perspective.

Instead, it turns out that everyone is eager to get a factory nearby so that they can all make a living again. There’s just one catch; there’s no doctor living in the harbour. And the oil company refuses to negotiate until the mayor has contracted a doctor to work in the harbour for the next five years.

Murray takes over as the new mayor, and decides to convince the community to brown-nose a doctor who’s living in the harbour for a month, Paul (played by Taylor Kitsch), in the hope that he’ll remain there as a permanent resident. Hence the title – ‘The Grand Seduction’.

I really tried to enjoy the film, but the filmmakers just made such strange choices throughout the film.

An inordinate amount of time is spent clearly illustrating that all the characters are in a grim set of circumstances. But why is the film scored with upbeat celtic-sounding music? For a while I was questioning whether the film was even set in Canada.

There’s a minor subplot where Murray’s wife leaves him so that she can go to work in a factory in another town. She cites the main reason is their crumbling relationship, rather than him being unemployed.

But this subplot is barely explored at all. And even when it is explored, there seems to be no relationship issues to speak of, and she’ll return to the harbour when there’s work. Wait, what?

Although there was quite a few contradictions throughout ‘The Grand Seduction’, I will admit that I did get a bit caught up in the film as it progressed.

While the community’s silly attempts to pull the wool over the Paul’s eyes did feel extremely mawkish at times, Gleeson’s relationship with Paul caught my attention. The two felt like they had a unique on-screen chemistry, and I would’ve gladly watched a film with just the two of them.

However, Murray and Paul’s time together is dwarfed by the ridiculous amount of time spent on the large cast of supporting characters. This is completely absurd. The film is about a tiny, isolated community. What’s worse is that the supporting characters seemingly only exist for comic relief (and the film isn’t even funny).

While the lead actors gave great performances, and there was some strong scenes, the film is simply just too much of a mess. In hindsight, ‘The Grand Seduction’ just seems like two hours of overbearing false sentimentality.

5/10

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