‘Brooklyn’ bridges life and fiction for Saoirse Ronan
The 1950s coming-of-age drama “Brooklyn” takes place in a rural Ireland town and in the New York borough, but it more properly exists somewhere in between, suspended between the pull of new adventure and the pangs of homesickness, the thrill of the future and the tug of the past.
Saoirse Ronan, who plays Eilis Lacey, a young Irish woman who sets out for the New World despite her mother’s misgivings, could hardly be more suited for the tale. From the beginning, her life has played out on both sides of the Atlantic.
“I was born in New York, in the Bronx,” she says. “Just like hip-hop. Just like J-Lo.”