Evelyn

Pierce Brosnan headlines as the real-life Irish laborer and barfly Desmond Doyle, who struggles in the 1950s to raise his three young children after he loses his job and their mother runs off to New Zealand with another man. The kids are placed in Catholic orphanages by the once inseparable alliance of church and state, and Doyle battles a legal technicality that keeps him from reuniting his family even after he tempers his drinking and finds new employment. The actual star here is Sophie Vavasseur, whose moving portrait as the eldest Doyle daughter intermittently keeps a gnawing overall dullness at bay. The movie is directed with familiar courtroom theatrics and gossamer, sentimental vigilance by Bruce Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy, Breaker Morant).