Stephen Frears’ “Philomena” is a film whose cinematic recipe seems tricky at best: Take a tragic tale — a true one, involving the Catholic Church — and make it a film that’s part serious drama, part road-buddy movie.
But “Philomena” works, thanks to the quality of its ingredients — especially the sensitive and nuanced performances by Judi Dench and by Steve Coogan, who co-wrote the script.
Director Frears, carefully calibrating the tone, is in fine form as he tackles a story based on the 2009 investigative book “The Lost Son of Philomena Lee,” by Martin Sixsmith. Lee, still living today, was an Irish teen who became pregnant during a fairground tryst. Rejected at home, she was sent to a convent where she endured a painful birth — and told the pain was penance for her sin — then forced to work in the laundry with other “fallen women” for years, allowed only an hour a day with her son.
Worse yet, the convent sold babies to wealthy Americans, and Philomena’s son, Anthony, was carried off one day as a toddler, without so much as a goodbye to his mother.
The movie begins on Anthony’s 50th birthday, with Philomena still desperate to find out what happened to him.
It’s a happy development that producers won their appeal to have it rated PG-13 rather than R.
