Ciaran Hinds & Iben Hjejle

Irish playwright, screenwriter and director Conor McPherson has long been a great one for a ghost story that gets under your skin in ways that transcend gimmickry.

His characters in "The Weir," for example, are haunted by spirits and memories of paranormal incidents, but McPherson's belief is that the dead and the living share the same breathing space.

His fine, scary and touching new film, "The Eclipse," is a tale of two hauntings. It's also a triumph for one actor, Ciaran Hinds, one of the best character actors in contemporary film, stepping into a leading role tailored for his baleful, sweet reserve and fierce emotional resources.

A wood-shop instructor in a small Irish coastal town, Michael Farr (Hinds) is a widower, raising two children. Their house seems to be haunted, or at least nagged by odd bumps and wails in the night. He meets a kindred spirit at a local literary arts festival: She's Lena Morelle (Iben Hjejle, in "High Fidelity" a decade ago), a London novelist obsessed with the supernatural. A monstrously vain (and married) author also visiting the festival, played by a ripe-bordering-on-overripe Aidan Quinn, wants to pick things up with Lena where they left off the last time they saw each other.

The first time we see an apparition gliding through Michael's house, early on, it's so quick and subtle you're not quite sure if you saw anything at all. Later, McPherson resorts to more conventional and nerve-jangling "gotcha!" moments. They're a bit jarring, though certainly not by accident. Also a bit jarring is Quinn, who's certainly having fun as the drunken blowhard on the make. But he verges on caricature, whereas the lovely characters created by Hinds and Hjejle are fully dimensional, as well as people you'd be happy to know in real life.

It's a small story, focused on who's really shadowing Michael from the beyond and how he acknowledges, after too long, his grief. But it's a special one. Hinds has been ready for a role of this size and shape for years; it was simply a matter of finding it, and its finding him.

 

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"The Eclipse" Movie Trailer

 

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MPAA rating: R (for language and some disturbing images).

Running time: 1:28

Cast: Ciaran Hinds (Michael Farr); Iben Hjejle (Lena Morelle); Aidan Quinn (Nicholas Holden).

Credits: Directed by Conor McPherson; written by McPherson and Billy Roche, based on Roche's "Tales From Rainwater Pond"; produced by Robert Walpole. A Magnolia Pictures release.