The Sea
A touching story of memory, love, loss and regret, The Sea, based on the Man Booker prize-winning novel by John Banville, is set for release on 18th April 2014 through Independent Distribution.
Grieving after the death of his wife, art historian Max Morden (Ciarán Hinds - Munich, Rome) returns to the sleepy seaside resort where he spent summers as a child. Max lodges at a boarding house he once frequented, where frosty proprietor Miss Vavasour (Charlotte Rampling - The Verdict, The Duchess), and eccentric resident Blunden (Karl Johnson - The Illusionist, Rome), now reside. Before long - and despite protestations from his daughter Clare (Ruth Bradley - Grabbers, Primeval) - Max revisits the ghosts of his past.
Max's mind returns to an idyllic summer in 1955 when, as a child, he encountered the Grace family. Carlo (Rufus Sewell - Dark City, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) and Connie (Natascha McElhone - The Truman Show, Californication) were unlike any adults he had met before: nonchalant, bohemian and filled with worldly grace and candour.
Young Max (Matthew Dillon) befriends the young Grace twins, Chloe (Missy Keating) and Myles (Padhraig Parkinson), and his fascination for this unconventional clan transforms into intimacy and love.
Meanwhile, the children's young nanny Rose (Bonnie Wright), an outsider like Max, regards the Grace's new surrogate with quiet suspicion.
While Max attempts to deal with the loss of his wife, and recalls moments with his departed partner Anna (Sinéad Cusack), he also confronts a distant trauma from the past.
The Sea, which was nominated for the Michael Powell Award at the 2013 Edinburgh International Film Festival and screened at the Toronto International Film Festival 2013, will be released by Independent Distribution on 18th April 2014.