Somebody involved with the making of "The Miracle Club" knows how to build a team.
The film, which isn't quite a "faith-based" movie though it's likely to appeal to that genre's audience, brings together three powerhouse actors -- Oscar winner Maggie Smith, Oscar winner Kathy Bates and Oscar nominee Laura Linney -- in service of a mildly feminist story about three Irish women, best friends from a somewhat insulated Catholic Dublin suburb of Ballygar, who, in 1967, travel to the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes in France, each with her own miracle for which to pray.
Eileen (Bates), has just found a lump in her breast. She's confided in her parish priest Father Dermot (Mark O'Halloran) but hasn't told her husband (Oscar nominee Stephen Rea) or anyone else in her large family. When the priest asks her if she's seen a doctor, she says "No, I want to go to Lourdes," which we might take as either a testament to her faith or a symptom of a certain narrow-mindedness (or both).
Dolly (Agnes O' Casey) is the much younger mother of young Daniel (Eric Smith) who won't -- for reasons that elude medical science -- speak. So off to Lourdes with him.
Lily (Smith) has been guilt-stricken since her son, Daniel, drowned years earlier at the age of 19. She sees the accident as a punishment from God and hopes a pilgrimage to Lourdes will expiate whatever sins she's accrued or at least relieve the pains she feels in her legs.
So when the local parish holds a talent competition with a grand prize of tickets to Lourdes, Eileen, Lily and Dolly team up to enter the Holy Cross Talent Show as the Miracles, a kind of Celtic girl group that delivers a credible version of the Chiffon's "He's So Fine." On the eve of the contest, Eileen's estranged best friend, Chrissie (Laura Linney) arrives, after a 40-year sojourn in America which has turned her into a cosmopolitan world traveler in a gold coat and all but elided her native accent. As it turns out, Chrissie's mother, the organizer of the contest and dear friend to Eileen, Dolly and Lily, has just died, imbuing the proceedings with a certain melancholy tone.
Both Lily and Eileen have a beef with Chrissie -- it had something to do with Declan and his fateful decision to set out to sea. And her leaving upset Chrissie's mother terribly. And Eileen lost her best friend.
But "I was banished!" she reminds them. Oh, yeah, that's right.
Eileen, Dolly and Lily don't quite manage to win the contest but through the sort of convolutions telegraphed by the title the trio, plus skeptical frenemy Chrissie, who inherited a ticket from her mother, soon find themselves herded onto a bus, into Dublin and then a ferry to France and on to Lourdes, to the grotto where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to young Bernadette in 1858.
"The Miracle Club" has plenty of virtues, chief among the easy grace of the principle cast (all the ladies are overqualified for their parts, though Bates' accent occasionally sounds forced). The relatively unknown O'Casey (great-granddaughter of the playwright Sean O'Casey) more than holds her own with the decorated veterans.
And the scenes shot in Ireland have a coziness which belies the time period -- early on we get shots of mini-skirted teenagers in Dublin but Ballygar feels stuck in the '50s.
But the script is bland and trite and about the best that can be said of Thaddeus O'Sullivan's direction is that it's Hallmark movie competent. It feels like a waste of pretty spectacular cast, but it's not the sort of movie that reasonable people get mad at -- anyone who has caught the trailer should know precisely what to expect. Any film about forgiveness and reconciliation should probably be given a pass these days -- good intentions ought to count for something.
"You don't come to Lourdes for a miracle," the kindly Father Dermot explains at one point. "You come for the strength to go on when there is no miracle."
It's a pat statement, but for a lot of us it might be true. To paraphrase another character, it never hurts to hope.