Romance dapples Four Letters of Love

          With the unabashed romantic title Four Letters of Love, author Niall Williams maintains a loving soul in the screenplay he adapts from his bestselling novel. Director Polly Steele in turn benefits from a strong cast. Pierce Brosnan headlines with Helena Bonham Carter and Gabriel Byrne providing additional support. Brosnan looks appropriately grizzled as a civil servant who chucks his boring job to become a painter and lend the film an artistic hue. Bonham Carter and Byrne catch nuances as a longtime couple who need no words to read one another’s thoughts and move together comfortably. No surprise that the trio shines, shifting easily from the roles that made them most famous—in James Bond, Harry Potter, and various Irish mob movies. The trio of pros play the old folks of course, ceding more screen time and youthful love interests to Fionn O’Shea and Ann Skelly. The appealing performers play characters who live separate lives though in true romance fashion, fate deems them a couple.  Getting to this preordained future risks treacly territory, with swelling music and narration that occasionally feels portentous and literary, but Steele’s sweeping touch with performers and landscapes makes the journey intriguing. Filmed in Belfast and along northern Ireland’s rugged, dramatic coastline, Four Letters of Love looks magnificent, suited to the scope of a grand romance that features a touch of supernatural input, faith, and the belief that fate overcomes various forms of human interference.