The Miracle Club: Charming Irish-Set Period Dramedy Brings the Star Power

By Kim Hughes

Rating: B+

Picturesque and genuinely heartfelt if a smidge corny, the Irish-set dramedy The Miracle Club serves mainly as a showcase for its trio of talents, Laura Linney, Kathy Bates, and Maggie Smith, billed in that order. The three are enduring stars for a reason, and together they bring verve to this story about faith in its many — sometimes unexpected — forms.

It’s 1967. After incalculable years away in the U.S. — so long, in fact, that her Irish lilt has completely vanished — Chrissie (Linney) returns to her birthplace village of Ballygar for her estranged mother’s funeral and to sort out the contents of her tiny house. As it happens, it’s the eve of a local talent contest with the top prize being two highly coveted tickets to Lourdes, the famous French baths renowned for their mystical healing powers.

Chrissie soon crosses paths with local spitfires Eileen (Bates) and Lily (Smith), who are hostile but who clearly have some kind of fraught history with Chrissie that is yet to be revealed. Both women hope to win the trip to Lourdes.

For the talent contest, they form a singing group with young local mother Dolly (Agnes O'Casey) whose small but preternaturally wise-looking son refuses to speak. Dolly too, hopes the magic of Lourdes can deliver a miracle for her boy.

The women don’t win the talent contest, but a lucky break sends them off to France anyway, local priest in tow, with Chrissie unexpectedly riding shotgun. A secondary plot finds the partners of Dolly, Eileen, and Lily raging at the notion of being left alone to cook and child-rear while their wives set off on an adventure, a reminder perhaps of how far we have come in just a generation.

In France amid the baths and architecture, The Miracle Club’s backstory takes shape. Years before, Chrissie was in love with Lily’s son Declan, and got pregnant, a scandalous development in mid-20th century Catholic Ireland.

Their happiness was thwarted by Lily and Maureen, Chrissie deceased mother, while Eileen — supposedly Chrissie’s contemporary, albeit older looking — was marginalized by other people’s choices and by society’s rigid expectations on women.

Nothing ended spectacularly well for anyone, least of all Declan. But, well, that’s life. And there have been triumphs along the way, notably for Eileen, who compensates with tender family what she lacks in comparative grace.

From this point on, the film’s focus softens on these guarded women who are nursing grudges and regrets and (gawd!) stupidly dependent partners. As the women return from abroad to those partners — exhausted and overwhelmed by domestic chores we have witnessed them fumbling through (notably an ace diaper-gone-wrong scene), and grateful to see their primary caregivers return — it’s clear that faith in the enduring power of forgiveness is the biggest miracle of all.

So yeah, nothing in The Miracle Club is rewriting cinematic storytelling despite having multiple narrative layers. But director Thaddeus O'Sullivan’s gentle film, with its sweeping vistas, top-drawer cast, and groovy period costumes is delightful, occasionally very humorous, and a reminder that life really does happen at its most profound when we are busy doing other things. Amid fanciful summer tentpole blockbusters and superheroes, there may be no better reason to see it.

The Miracle Club. Directed by Thaddeus O'Sullivan. Starring Laura Linney, Kathy Bates, and Maggie Smith. In theatres July 14.