La leggenda della sirena

I saw the movie on Sat.... and was more interested in the beautiful architecture of the monastery...does anyone know what/where that building is located? Is it in the Vancouver Island for real? Movie was OK.... It was good to see Kim Basenger back in the swing of acting, but also the movie didn't answer a lot of questions already posted by others before me. If anyone has a clue where it was filmed...please let me know.. as I just can't stop thinking about the ornate Italian architecture and where that might be somewhere off the edge of an island. I was so fascinated with the details of the building...sorry that I took a different focus...

Thanks! Ana

I thoroughly enjoyed The Mermaids Chair, it had romance, love, sadness, pain, and healing all in one. It kept me enraptured for the whole 2 hours, (well without commercials it would have).. I could feel Jesse's pain, and her sadness, and the pull towards the handsome monk............all the turmoil she must have been going thru was there, her mother, husband, daughter, and then meeting this wonderful man, who met her needs and fulfilled her in her time of need. I enjoyed the camaraderie of the women, which is something we don't recognize in these times we live in...........how much we need that togetherness of women. It was well done. Hope there will be more like it soon. Aloha

The Mermaid Chair is one of my favorite books. Sue Mink Kidd is a South Carolina gal, as am I, and I've enjoyed her writings for years. When I heard they'd made this into a movie, I had my doubts. After seeing it, I can say it was worse than I could imagine. Not even FILMED on the coast of SC (which is practically a character itself in the book). British Columbia has gorgeous coastlines, but they don't look a thing like the southern east coast.

Skip the movie. Read the book. It is so beautifully written and fleshed out. The characters are realistic. The movie people seemed to be nothing but cardboard, limping along in a weak script.

I had several problems with the movie:

(1) The screenplay -- specifically, Kim Basinger's voice over: Movies are not books; they should *show* the action rather than have a voice over *tell* us what's happening. Occasionally I find a movie with a voice over that works, but here it seemed more of a lazy way of writing the script. In fact, it sounded to me as if she was practically reading excerpts from the novel in her voice over.

(2) I felt no emotion in the relationship between Jessie and Brother Thomas and also felt that Alex Carter's acting was pretty bad. That's a significant failure for me in defining Jessie's and Thomas' characters -- with no connection between them, it seemed to me as if she just wanted a stud and that for him it was a matter of being sex-deprived. If it had been properly done, the relationship between them would have given much more context to the story.

(3) With the book, I understood Jessie's mid-life crisis. In the movie, it seemed more like just plain boredom.

On the plus side, I didn't think the movie was so bad as for me to turn off the TV . . . though that thought did occur to me.

It's a typical Lifetime movie except Kim Basinger is a really good actress. She really does the character justice and adds the element of mystery to her character. Sure the kind of movie has been done countless times and these movies never seem to do the book justice...it's unfortunate. It's OK. I'm liking it so far and it is not a bad movie, not by a long shot. It's very interesting and mysterious, anticipation grows and the storytelling by Basinger is flowing nicely. The portrayal of the monk's character is also done nicely. The monk is a sensitive person who seems to be unsure of himself, more so as the relationship between himself and the woman grows. Adultery is what's being committed here, although it seems to be a mixture of love and lust. How the story unfolds? It's quite the story.