“The Miracle Club" is a road movie of sorts as it follows three Irish women from working-class Dublin on a 1967 pilgrimage to Lourdes, France, where the trio — who aren’t exactly devout Catholics — are each seeking miracles.
For Lily (Maggie Smith), the miracle, as it were, would be to be relieved of the burden of the death of her 19-year-old son Declan some 40 years ago. For Eileen (Kathy Bates), the miracle is more straightforward: She’s discovered a lump in her breast and fears the worst.
For Chrissie (Laura Linney), who has returned to Ireland for the first time since she was banished 40 years earlier to attend her mother’s funeral, the miracle would be reconciliation with Lily and Eileen four decades after their painful separation.
That she’s on the bus trip, via ferry and highway, is the result of the urging of Father Byrne (Mark O’Halloran), who tries to keep the pilgrims together, even as they seem to spar with each other over nothing.
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"The Miracle Club," which wants to be a dramedy, makes most of its comic relief from the men of the oh-so-paternalistic parish who are left behind by their wives. That includes Eileen’s husband (Stephen Rea), who has to deal with a brood of children and grandchildren for the first time, and the husband of Dolly (Agnes O'Casey), who has told her not to return home if she takes her son, who doesn’t talk at age 5, on the trip to hopefully find the miracle of speech.
But the comedic scenes, which aren’t that funny, jarringly change the tone of the intensely personal drama that is playing out between the three older women and Dolly and her son.
Once it spins out the reasons for the estrangement between Chrissie and the women she left behind, the movie is pretty predictable as it moves toward its sentimental conclusion when the bus gets back to Dublin.
The picture is, however, very well acted. Smith and Bates each are Oscar winners and Linney has been nominated three times, qualifications of a sort for them to perfectly inhabit each of their characters (A bit of a warning here: Smith’s Irish brogue is a little hard to understand early on and Bates’ accent comes and goes).
And “The Miracle Club,” directed by Thaddeus O'Sullivan, is a visual gem, with the cinematography of John Conroy exquisitely capturing the pilgrims in the intimate scenes, the bustling Dublin church and the famous French cathedral and its environment.
The acting and the cinematography combine to overcome the uneven, predictable storyline and a sometimes wobbly script to make “The Miracle Club” watchable, and likely satisfying for the right audience.