A gentle Irish fairy tale full of feeling

Among the film’s pleasures is a disarmingly tender performance from the new, improved Colin Farrell. A few years back, the actor was briefly Hollywood’s Next Big Thing, and we all know how that usually turns out (in this case, a ridiculous supervillain costume in “Daredevil,’’ the lead in the ridiculous Oliver Stone epic “Alexander,’’ and a ridiculous amount of ink devoted to his off-camera misbehavior). Since his turn as the hapless brother in “Cassandra’s Dream,’’ though, Farrell has been exploring hesitance and loss, and even his country-music superstar in last year’s “Crazy Heart’’ was humble enough to atone for past sins.

In “Ondine,’’ the actor plays a small-town fisherman named Syracuse, but everyone calls him Circus since they need a village clown. A divorced alcoholic two years off the bottle, Syracuse is trying hard to turn his life around and takes his trawler out every morning hoping for the best. But the fish aren’t coming, and neither is respect.

The movie begins with a splash: the fisherman pulling a mermaid up in his net. No, not a mermaid exactly, but perhaps a selkie, one of the seal-women of local legend and John Sayles’s 1994 “The Secret of Roan Inish,’’ whose grounded whimsy this film shares. She calls herself Ondine (Alicja Bachleda) and when she sings the fish practically jump into Syracuse’s boat.

What’s a good ex-Catholic to do but hit the confessional? Among the wittiest scenes in “Ondine’’ are the hero’s regular visits to the village priest (Stephen Rea, who has been in Neil Jordan-land before and understands how high to arch his eyebrows). Syracuse knows the good father won’t spread his tales of mythical sea-sirens, even if Ondine has moved into her savior’s seaside cottage by then and made herself at home. Her gradual coming-out to the town’s bewildered, bewitched citizens is the film’s most felicitous conceit.