Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Contentar Best movie of this year hands down!

Livestonth I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Marva-nova Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Chad Shiira More mermaids, please. Fay(Emilia Fox) is supposed to like mermaids, but the filmmaker shows disinterest in the mythical creatures of the deep by its very negation from the museum curator's interior life. The mermaid, who is often alone, describes Fay's emotional life. Mermaids are sirens; solitary creatures who lure lonely sailors with their beauty and oceanic love songs. It's a visual motif that needs to be in the film. A filmmaker with an understanding of Irish folklore would exploit Fay's passion to the hilt. When her love affair with Tom Avery(Bruce Greenwood) goes awry, that's when "The Republic of Love" needs the half-woman, half-fish inside Faye to come out of its watery environs. She is a romantic. A mermaid. Late in the film, she watches a documentary about eels, which would've made a stronger impression on the viewer had the mermaid angle been better exploited. The realities of the sea(eels exist; mermaids don't) mirrors the reality of her parents' marriage, and the reality of her godfather's mortality(mermaids are immortal; humans are not). But the filmmaker never allows Fay to be a mermaid. The filmmaker seems to keep the Irish nature of "The Republic of Love" largely in the closet. Instead, for some inexplicable reason, mournful Indian music on the soundtrack describes Fay's grief, even though, earlier in "The Republic of Love", it's her former lover who rented the Bollywood musical. She had fallen asleep. Indian cinema disinterest her. But this filmmaker doesn't care and takes a page out of the Mira Nair handbook(she transformed "Vanity Fair" into something that lovers of the William Makepeace Thackery couldn't recognize), nevertheless, by grafting her indigenous culture onto a foreign one, which probably ill-serves the Carol Shields novel. The late Canadian writer shouldn't be punished for writing about white people. This filmmaker wants to integrate Shields' imagination.

marcreyer I agree with the previous commentary that there is an excellent director at work in this film, and that the script can be rather thin at times. However, the chemistry between Bruce Greenwood and Emilia Fox save the movie. The ups and downs they face have some similar correlation to the problems we all face in real life, although there are times when one wonders about their strange situations. Still, both actors have created full, living and breathing characters for us to enjoy and, while at times we wonder why the story heads in a certain direction, we are still captivated by the relationship these two actors have created for the screen. In my youth I was never a fan of Canadian productions. Films like this keep changing my mind and deserve all the support we can give it.Get your lover, a bottle of your favourite wine and enjoy; it's worth it.

gprovida I love romantic movies with a bit of the comedic. This movie filled that need wonderfully and added mythic tone as well with both Mermaids and Indian music/themes. I have to admit the script's attempt to capture the complex history and intertwined lives was a bit difficult to follow on first blush. However, given the important theme of this interconnectedness (wow what a silly term), I can understand the desire, need, and effort. There are few movies that i return to again and again, Still Breathing, Pleasantville, Beat of the Heart, etc. that give me that warm feeling inside that love is possible. Yeah I know its supposed to be complicated changing etc. and more than a bit self centered, e.g., Woody Allen's movies are rife with that. I would love to get the soundtrack of this movie as well, but fear that may be hard to do, suspect I will have to track down each piece myself online for my pod. Returning to the movie -- This movie also hearkens back to 30s and 40s when it was OK to have a romantic script. Among the actor's I particularly enjoyed the performance of Fay (E. Fox) and look forward to seeing more of her work.

tvordlj This is the new offering by Deepa Mehta, most recently she of Hollywood Bollywood, a Canadian hit last year. In fact there is an `in' joke in Republic of Love and if you have seen H.B. you'll spot it. The movie is based on a book by the late Carol Shields and surmises that each of us is our own `republic'. The theme of the movie is based on `geography is destiny' and it seems so in this case.Republic of Love is a love story between two very different people, Tom and Fay. Tom was illegitimate and his mother, we are told, suffered from post partum depression. Tom was used as a practice baby for a class of young homemakers to be and thus had his start overlooked and spoiled by 27 `mothers'. This seems to have shaped his destiny. He is now in his early 40's, married and divorced 3 times and he wonders what love really is. He gets told every night by his listeners - he is a late night radio talk and music show host - and he gets a wide range of opinions from bitter to sentimental. He is also surrounded by good relationships so why is it so difficult for him to find one that lasts?Fay is a museum curator, never married, whose parents have been happily married for 40 years. This has shaped her destiny. She too us surrounded by happy relationships. In addition to her parents' marriage, Her brother is married with kids, her godparents have never been married but are devoted to each other. All of this perceived perfection has the effect of making Fay keep her relationships at arms' length, a little detached. They never work out because they couldn't possibly measure up to her parents' shining example. She has just pushed away her current boyfriend because he wants to move in.Tom and Fay turn out to have several mutual acquaintances. She even knows all of his ex wives. Tom and Fay meet at a children's Halloween party and it's literally love at first sight. Tom realizes what love really feels like and she in turn, is suddenly and inexorably ready to take that leap of faith into the sea of commitment. Serendipitously, they even live in the same apartment building, two floors apart. Clearly, it's meant to be. Ah, but why bother making a movie at all if it was as open and shut as that? Fay's parents split up out of the blue which rocks her to her core and she doesn't deal with it very well. See? Even perfect relationships don't last! I saw it at the Atlantic Film Festival and we had a brief introduction to it by one of the producers who described the movie as being about the different colours of love, different kinds of relationships and how they work for the different couples including the dynamics between Fay and her father and Tom and his mother who found the love of her life finally at age 52. We all know that our relationships with our parents can have a profound effect on our adult relationships with others and all that is reflected here. Not in enough detail, however. You always feel like there should be more to the story, or that some link is missing. That is often what happens when adapting a book for the screen. The performances are all very good including a delightful one by Jackie Borroughs as Tom's mother. Most of us Canadians will remember her as Aunt Hetty from The Road to Avonlea. There are one or two other faces that will be familiar to Canadian film fans (Rebecca Jenkins). The cast seems mainly Caucasian yet the background music is most definitely Indian-Asian in flavour which seemed out of place to me so many I missed something there.It's not a bad movie, but it was predictable as well. Fay's main area of expertise at the museum of Folklore, currently, is documenting and researching sightings of mermaids, a mythical unobtainable creature of perfection. Duh. Tom works nights in an underground `city', deserted once the overhead office blocks empty for the day (Toronto's PATH system it looks like). He's out of touch with the day to day reality, comings and goings of most people he knows and aside from his producer, spends his nights talking to lonely insomniacs.It all works out in the end. It's a love story and nobody would go to see it if it didn't. Is it worth seeing? Yes. It's a good movie, but not a great one.