The Miracle Club (now on Netflix) finds three heavyweights convening for a lightweight dramedy: Laura Linney, Kathy Bates and Maggie Smith. You’d think there’d be a dozen Oscars among them, but there’s only three, which seems almost criminal – and almost as criminal as casting them in a lightweight dramedy that doesn’t demand much from them. But even though the principals are punching under their weight class doesn’t mean the film isn’t without its charms; the question is whether it delivers enough laughs and pathos to justify committing 90 minutes of your life to it.
The Gist: The SUFFOCATING AURA OF DEATH hovers over a hardscrabble housing development in Dublin. Maureen, a beloved neighbor, has passed, leaving her closest friends to mourn: Lily (Smith), Eileen (Bates) and Dolly (Agnes O’Casey). Weirdly, the three women don matching, rainbow-patterned dresses for the service – although it’s not really a funeral service, it’s a church talent show Maureen organized, and our protags hop on stage to sing a spirited number, hoping to win tickets for a trip to Lourdes, France, to visit the holy basilica and baths. The actual service in the actual church is therefore occurring unattended, save for Chrissie (Linney), Maureen’s long-estranged daughter, fresh from America with Pan Am tags still hanging from her luggage.
And here is where we learn that Chrissie has quite the Fraught Past with Lily and Eileen. The latter are shocked to see Chrissie turn up out of the blue after decades, and their reception ranges from chilly (Lily refuses Chrissie’s attempt to pay for the funeral flowers) to hostile (Eileen stares daggers into her, with Bates channeling the tiniest bit of Misery into the moment). It’s barely worth noting how they end up taking the pilgrimage to Lourdes – the singing ladies don’t win the talent contest, but the angel-voiced boy who does gives the tickets to them – although such a spiritually enriching endeavor sure seems like the perfect opportunity to bury some old rusty hatchets. To no one’s surprise, the men in their lives (Stephen Rea is most notable among them, playing Eileen’s lesser half) aren’t happy that their wives won’t be around for a few days to cook and clean and change diapers, but they’ll just have to figure it out, the louts. They don’t understand why it’s important for these women to work through the guilt on the way to forgiveness, and do all that Catholic stuff.
But that might take one of those, whaddaya call ’em, miracles. If you’re not aware, Lourdes is a place for such things – Holy Mary Mother of God Herself was allegedly spotted there in the mid-19th century, prompting believers to trek there to bathe in the spring waters in hopes of healing their ailments. It’s especially poignant for these women: Lily still aches from the loss of her son, who drowned in the ocean 40 years prior. Eileen has a lump on her breast, but hasn’t told anyone about it. Dolly hopes the waters will cure her son’s inability – unwillingness? – to speak. And Chrissie just needs the trip, hopefully to achieve some closure about What Happened during the Fraught Past. And at this point I’m thinking, if this doesn’t end with crying and hugs, I’m gonna riot.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Miracle Club is a significantly flimsier take on themes explored in Judi Dench vehicle Philomena; it’s also infinitely preferable to grating American female-bonding comedies like 80 for Brady or Book Club: The Next Chapter.
Performance Worth Watching: Bates goes too broad, and Linney isn’t given nearly enough to do. But Smith is in typically fine form as the wise grandmotherly type who keeps the group from indulging too much bitterness.
Memorable Dialogue: Smith delivers the movie’s two best lines in what’s surely a heavily rehearsed Irish brogue:
The serious one, as they approach the Lourdes baths: “Now be strong, whatever you might see. The heartbreak of the world is upon us.”
And the funny one, as she dismisses her codependent husband who doesn’t want her to leave: “Go back to bed, Tommy – you’ll be safe there.”
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: Appropriately, for all its depictions of bathing in Lourdes’ freezing waters and discussions of prompting miscarriages in a boiling hot tub (!), The Miracle Club feels like a lukewarm bath. Its comedy is gentle and predictable, and its drama is, well, gentle and predictable. Smith, Bates and Linney – and O’Casey, who shows she at the very least can hang with three of the greats – make something modestly substantive out of a thin stew. Its revelations aren’t particularly revelatory, but if any cast can find some delicate poignancy in a handful of scenes and turn up a little bit of spiritual angst, therefore rendering a bland movie watchable, it’s this one.
Director Thaddeus O’Sullivan clearly isn’t trying to do more than fulfill the cliches of a well-trod, well-meaning formula: Women are the backbone of the community; their attempts to spiritually better themselves are met by the harrumphing of the men for whom they thanklessly toil; they have their families, but they wouldn’t be themselves without each other. There’s an undeniable warmth to films of this ilk, which at the very least are mostly character-driven, and flirt with eccentricity even if they never truly indulge it. It’s tempting to dismiss The Miracle Club as toothless, quasi-feminist piffle, but you have to admire how it connects the collective feminine ache of these characters with that of the Virgin Mary, who, for the pious at least, is ground zero for such things. That’s fairly audacious – and as audacious as The Miracle Club gets.
Our Call: The Miracle Club is far from miraculous, but Linney, Smith and Bates share just enough chemistry to justify a watch, especially for admirers of their work. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
