Though known as a prolific playwright, John Patrick Shanley’s film career is notable as the scribe behind oddball heartfelt romances such as Moonstruck and Joe Versus the Volcano, along with being a writer on everything from unabashed b-movies (Congo) to somber reflections on sexual predation and Catholicism like (Doubt).
Today brings the trailer for his first film in more than a decade, Wild Mountain Thyme, about two feuding but inseparable lovers, Anthony (Jamie Dornan) and Rosemary (Emily Blunt), whose romance in Ireland is complicated by a land dispute involving both their families.
Adapted (and expanded) by Shanley from his own Tony-nominated two-hander Outside Mullingar, it’s fair to say that the film looks nothing short of charmingly idiosyncratic, alternating between slapstick meet-cute scenes and sweeping melodrama. Also starring Emily Blunt, Jamie Dornan, Christopher Walken, and Jon Hamm, it should be worth watching for nothing else than trying to divine Walken’s accent.
See the trailer and poster below.
An epic love story with soaring lyricism, WILD MOUNTAIN THYME is set against the breath-taking landscapes of rural Ireland, where everyone is half mad with loneliness or love, and the weather is terrible. Anthony and Rosemary are star-crossed lovers, whose families are caught up in a feud over a hotly contested patch of land that separates their two farms. Anthony (Dornan) always seems to be out in the fields working, worn down by his father’s constant belittling. But what really stings is his father’s threat to bequeath the family farm to his American cousin Adam. Rosemary (Blunt) at first seems to hold a grudge for having been shamed by Anthony in childhood, but the sparks between them would keep a bonfire blazing through the night. Her mother Aoife strives to unite the families before it is too late. Just when we think Anthony will pluck up the courage to face up to his repressed feelings, cousin Adam (Hamm) steps in with a plan to sweep Rosemary off her feet, romancing her over a magical 24 hours in Manhattan.
Wild Mountain Thyme opens on December 11.