It's like if Normal People and Bee Movie had a baby. If you've heard of it, chances are you know what that plot twist is. And if you haven't — well, just you wait. It looked bland and innocuous, entirely predictable, and something I would watch when I couldn't sleep at 2am, in the vein of Chesapeake Shores or Virgin River. I didn't give it much more thought until I read a review that revealed The Twist and suddenly it was all I could think about.
I had to see this movie. He's dead. He is the father of Jamie Dornan's character, Anthony, and he is IN the movie, but he tells us at the outset he's dead. Immediately you know this is not your average romance movie. Dead Christopher Walken tells us Rosemary is already in love with Anthony. Anthony seems pretty oblivious to Rosemary's feelings and is into some girl called Fiona. Rosemary gets all sad, and her dad tells her not to be so glum because she's a swan queen — the unstoppable white swan — and he plays Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake for her.
This will come up again later. Rosemary dances around her front garden like a swan, and we cut to a grown Rosemary ie Emily Blunt riding a horse through that beautiful green Irish countryside. He's either in the actual rain, or has just come in from the rain, or is falling in the river, or finding some other way to be wet.
Jamie Dornan showed up to hair and makeup every day to just be absolutely doused in water, it seems. Rosemary's father has just died and she and her mother visit the Reillys after the funeral. Mama Reilly, meanwhile, is already dead. The characters say a lot of words, the most important of which refer to the fact that Tony Reilly that'd be Christopher Walken, not yet dead is waiting for Anthony to hurry up and get married so he knows the family farm will be secure for the future.
Despite being given his mother's ring three years earlier, Anthony seems determined not to marry, for no apparent reason. Anthony tells Rosemary about why he stays on the farm, and it's all rather poetic — something about the animals and the greenery the greenery IS very nice. Being horny for Anthony is in fact her defining character trait. She literally spends the whole movie — her entire life — just waiting around for him to ask her out. And boys does he make her wait. The letter, meanwhile, turns out to be from Anthony's American cousin, Adam.
