Brooklyn

Saoirse Ronan, star of Atonement and Hanna, impressively comes of age in this sweet, crowd-pleasing tale of a woman torn between two worlds. Adapted by Nick Hornby (About a Boy) from the novel by Colm Toibin, it's set in the austere 1950s, with Ronan playing a small-town Irish girl who relocates to Brooklyn, New York. Surviving both acute homesickness and the jibes of other girls in her digs (run by a comically excellent Julie Walters), Ronan eventually finds romance with an Italian-American (Emory Cohen). But then there's a tragedy back home and she is torn, not only between new and old worlds, but also between two loves - her old flame played by Domhnall Gleeson. Brooklyn is the sort of film that you slip warmly and comfortably into like a well-worn pair of slippers. It breaks no bounds, offers no edges. But it's a hugely likeable piece of old-fashioned entertainment from Boy A director John Crowley that will have old softies everywhere shedding tears of joy and sadness.