Philomena just made me mad. Mad and depressed and so, so disappointed with the world. It’s the story of an ordinary Irish girl in the 50s who falls pregnant outside of marriage and is essentially enslaved by nuns while her child is sold off to the highest bidder. Over the decades she tries to find him, only to be continually thwarted by the Good Catholics at the convent, who lie and dissemble and defraud both mother and son of their rights in the most abominable and inhumane way.
It’s not a gleeful tale, not by an means, but it is at least told with wry humour, and acted with pep and verve by Judy Dench in the title role. I didn’t think it was an Oscar-worthy film, particularly, but I did think it a story worth telling. Although some of it filmed on location in DC, the rest filmed in the UK and Ireland. Some of the accents are just a bit off, so you can tell.