Beloved novel Four Letters of Love adapted for screen, filmed on location in Ireland
Originally published in 1997 and translated into more than 30 languages, Niall Williams’ beloved novel Four Letters of Love can now be seen on the big screen in an adaptation directed by Polly Steele, starring Pierce Brosnan, Helena Bonham Carter, Gabriel Byrne, Ann Skelly and Fionn O’Shea.
Filmed across Northern Ireland and in County Donegal, on the Northwest coast of Ireland, part of the Wild Atlantic Way, the story tells of Nicholas and Isabel who are made for each other, but fate does not always choose the easiest path to true love. As destiny pulls them together, so do family, passion, and faith drive them apart.
“It’s about two families on two different sides of Ireland,” says Helena Bonham Carter. “You’ve got the Dublin family, William, a painter who can’t paint, played by Pierce, and his son Nicholas. And on the West of Ireland, you have a writer who can’t write, Master Gore, played by Gabriel Byrne, and their daughter Isabelle Gore. So, you’ve got these two young heroes —Isabelle and Nicholas—and the big question mark is how these two people end up together, how do they meet, and how their lives come to coincide. I play this mother, I’m the matriarch, a strong woman, I keep the world going—the family world going.”
Discussing the decision to film in Ireland, director Polly Steele was in awe of the landscapes available, “Ireland was the perfect backdrop. The landscape is more than just a setting - it's a character in the story. The west coast, with its raw beauty and elemental nature, was instrumental in capturing the film's essence.”
“The Irish landscape is like another character in the film,” continues Gabriel Byrne. “It’s poetic and moody, sometimes overwhelmingly beautiful. A part of Ireland that had never really been seen on screen before.”
“When I first read the script, I was really taken in by the rhythm of it,” notes Ann Skelly, who plays Isabel Gore. “The rhythm of Irishness was very present and I thought the language and the way Niall writes is so beautiful and I could imagine that transferring really well in the film.”
Helena Bonham Carter agreed: “It was hugely fun for just me as a person to be able to visit all these places and be in the places,” she adds. “You know, it is, the landscape of the places that so inform the story – Murlough Bay! Well, it was like being on the edge of the world. It was extraordinary and stunning.”
“There’s a certain sense of aloneness in a beautiful landscape,” said Pierce Brosnan about filming in Ireland. “It holds a special place in my heart—Ireland—and the mystery of Ireland, the beauty of Ireland, my own kinship with Ireland—being Irish, from the banks of the River Boyne, Navan, County Meath”. Alongside that deep connection to the land he knew, the setting of Donegal was a happy, fresh discovery. “Never having been to Donegal,” he continues, “and hearing about Donegal and the Wild Atlantic Way and the forgotten county and all these emblems of what this great county is, and nation is, was powerful.”
Brosnan was also able to blend his own work / life balance in a beautiful way. “I get to travel with my wife, Keeley, and to bring my mother back home to Ireland,” he says, adding “you have this great novelist who has penned the script, you don’t get that very often. It was a very strong, seductive package of life and definitely left a piece of my heart here in Donegal.”
The locations imprinted on Gabriel Byrne, who feels he won’t be alone in falling for the natural settings depicted on screen. “People will want to know where those locations are,” he says. “A lot of them are hidden; undiscovered; bleak; baron, at times; but also, intensely beautiful and inaccessible”. And just as he hopes audiences will want to discover these places.