Film review: Brooklyn

Based on the novel by Colm Tóibín, with a screenplay by Nick Hornby, this beautifully shot coming-of-age story, set against the backdrop of 1950s Ireland and New York, is a film to get lost in.

Eilis (Saoirse Ronan) travels to America with the encouragement of her family, for the opportunity of a better life. Homesick and trying to adapt to her new life in a boarding house run by Mrs Kehoe (Julie Walters), department-store job and bookkeeping classes, it is only when Eilis meets Tony (Emory Cohen) that she begins to blossom.

When a family tragedy brings her home, she finds herself torn between two men and two countries; a life she is familiar with and a new life she has just begun to make her own.

Brooklyn, directed by John Crowley, is a fantastic portrayal of the difficult and emotional choices young women faced in the mid 20th-century, Eilis shows courage and conviction in following her heart and is a lesson for us all to walk our own path, despite everyone else’s expectations.

Watch the trailer here:

Brooklyn opens in British and Irish cinemas this weekend