An Irish fable with more passion than narrative.

The narrator of “Four Letters of Love” is the young lover Nicholas Coughlan (Fionn O’Shea). The time and place is 1970s Ireland. The big names used in the mix are Pierce Brosnan, Helena Bonham Carter, and Gabriel Byrne. And the concept suggests that Nicholas and Isabel (Ann Skelly) are meant to be together. That’s the general idea of the movie.

As usual in an Irish drama, the country is beautifully photographed, and being a person of Irish decent, I loved traveling there a decade ago. The cinematography makes the film look as clean as the country itself. And the costumes are lovely and consistent to the country and time period.

But the movie, directed by Polly Steele, doesn’t resonate with the passion presented inside the story. It seems to be soapy and meandering, as if it assumed that the characters and their art were enough to tell a story. It ends up going all over the place, and it sometimes confuses you.

Awhile after her brother (Donal Finn) has an accident that paralyzes him, Isabel leaves her parents (Byrne as the poet and Carter as the intuitive mother) to attend a convent school, which she often sneaks away from to hang out with the charming bad influence Peader (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo from “Sing Street” and “CODA”), whose message to her is I’m the person my mother told you I am.” In fact, the nuns expel her for her sins.

Nicholas’ father (Brosnan) is a civil servant who quits his job to become an artist and sell paintings. And he would eventually head west, which would lead to his son and wife losing their faith in God. But Nicholas seeing his father art work inspires him to become a writer.

And he comes into Isabel’s life when he unexpectedly cure her brother of his illness. That’s when he becomes a hopeless romantic and falls in love with her.

From my stand point, this movie is more like “Two Letters of Love.” It is beautifully photographed by Damien Elliott, and I admire the performances from Skelly and Bonham Carter, but the movie seems to be going through the motions. At lot of the material here feels like something out of a soap opera with not much basis, and you can’t read all these characters as much as you’d like to. Some of them stay and earn our attention, while others tend to meander about,

In terms of Irish fables, I was thinking about “The Secret of Roan Inish,” which was about a girl whose baby brother was swept out to sea and raised by a selkie (seals that can shed their skins to become humans). That movie wasn’t just visually stunning, but it was full of life and people who have the right kind of drama and passion. If you haven’t seen or heard about that John Sayles classic, which was also based on the book “Secret of the Ron Mor Skerry,” I suggest you check it out.

An Irish drama like “Four Letters of Love” should be as vivid as it looks, but there needed to be a better script and direction in order to take us into their passionate worlds. How about some stamps? That would be more helpful.

In Select Theaters