The Sea (2013 film)

The story of a man who returns to the sea where he spent his childhood summers in search of peace following the death of his wife.

• Rufus Sewell as Carlo Grace
• Natascha McElhone as Connie Grace
• Ciarán Hinds as Max Morden
• Sinéad Cusack as Anna Morden
• Bonnie Wright as Rose
• Charlotte Rampling as Miss Vavasour
• Ruth Bradley as Claire
• Karl Johnson as Blunden
• Mark Huberman as Jerome
• Missy Keating as Chloe
• Matthew Dillon as Young Max
• Amy Molloy as Shop Girl (Sadie)
• Stephen Cromwell as Young Tough (Mick)

The producer of the film Luc Roeg said that "I've wanted to make a film of John Banville's haunting and soulful novel for several years and it's been worth the wait. I'm excited to introduce a new film maker, Stephen Brown, to world cinema and I couldn't be more delighted with the cast and crew we've assembled together with our producing partners at Samson Films."[2]

Filming started in September 2012 and finished in January 2013.[5][6]

The Sea premièred at the 2013 Edinburgh International Film Festival and received mixed reviews. Rating it at 7/10,the Screenkicker website said "intimate, superbly acted meditation on grief and abandonment that will make you think about how we cope with tragedy".[7] Marc Adams, chief film critic of Screen Daily wrote, "the film's emotional still waters run deep and the film is gently watchable as a series of fine actors deliver nuanced and powerful performances."[8] Guy Lodge of Variety wrote "This good, middlebrow adaptation of John Banville's Booker Prize-novel sacrifices structural intricacy for Masterpiece-style emotional accessibility." And added "Afforded the least, but most searing, screen time are Anna's final days, which economically imply longer-running problems in Max’s marriage. In a uniformly strong cast, a superbly terse Cusack cuts that little bit deeper as a dying woman who understandably has no time for her husband’s hovering pain."[9]

Local response was less favourable. Niki Boyle of Film List, a Scottish web magazine, gave the film two out of five stars and said that "Hinds and Rampling are suitably low-key, and character actor Karl Johnson puts in a decent turn as a more poignant version of The Major from Fawlty Towers, but the whole thing feels utterly derivative, from the contrast between the muted-palette and light-saturated flashbacks, to the spare, mournful piano-and-violin score."[10] Rob Dickie of "Sound on Sight", praised the performance of cast but criticise the pace and climax of the film by saying that " the pace is lethargic, there are no surprising revelations and the ending is horribly anticlimactic, meaning the strong performances and flashes of visual flair go to waste."[11]

Ross Miller of Thoughts on Film gave it 1 out of 5 stars, saying that, "What could have been a fascinating and melancholic look at memory, regret and loss is actually a boring and monotonous character drama... a pretentious mess that's a chore to sit through."[12] Emma Thrower of The Hollywood News also gave film a negative review by saying that "A frustrating blend of wooden and naturalistic, it is a surprise to realise author John Banville is responsible for a screenplay that often unfolds like an overblown television drama. Rufus Sewell and Bonnie Wright also suffer in these laborious and often unwelcome instagram-filtered interludes, Sewell an incongruous pantomime villain and Wright an underused but ultimately ineffective screen presence."[13]

The Sea also served as the closing film at "25th Galway Film Fleadh", at 14 July 2013.[14][15] IconCinema listed The Sea at its Top 200 most anticipated films of 2013.[16]

• The Sea at IMDb
• The Sea at AllMovie
• The Sea at Rotten Tomatoes