'A Shine of Rainbows' a quiet but engaging domestic drama

Vic Sarin's "A Shine of Rainbows" won't be raking in the cash at this weekend's box office. It lacks popular A-list stars, operates on a minimal marketing budget and offers a subject that doesn't exactly scream date movie.

It's just a quiet, slowly engaging domestic drama with a good heart, told with sincerity, and elevated by a trio of excellent performances.

The story begins in an Irish orphanage where a little lad named Tomas (John Bell, an open wound of compassion and sympathy) suffers daily abuse meted out by class bullies, unabated by the priest and nuns.

Tomas' life takes a drastic change when he is abruptly adopted by Maire (Connie Nielsen), a beautiful and outgoing young woman. She sweeps the boy away to the stony Corrie Island off the Irish coast. (The transition from the dark and colorless orphanage to the color-bursting island feels a bit ham-handed, but it still works.)

Maire's self-sufficient husband Alec (Chicago's own Aidan Quinn, a model of restrained, raging emotion) can't hide his dismay at Maire's choice of his new son.

Tomas is constantly terrorized by people and new things. He hides out in the shed rather than meet the neighbors from the nearest farm. He seems lost and incapable of handling the slightest responsibility.

"Why did you have to pick the runt of the litter?" Alec coldly says to Maire.

Only minutes into the movie, Nielsen has already answered that question by laying out Maire's character in efficient and precise detail. She didn't choose the boy she needed. She chose the boy who needed her.

Alec clearly doesn't understand this, and goes about his business, almost ignoring Tomas. For a while.

Fans of Lifetime movies will probably not be surprised by the tragic plot twist in "A Shine of Rainbows." When Alec and Tomas are left alone in their small house (now symbolically bled of its former vibrant colors), the disappointed dad and terrified child no longer have the loving spirit of Maire to buffer their emotions.

As their relationship strains to the breaking point, a woman from the Irish government hovers in the background like an official vulture, waiting for the chance to pounce on poor Tomas and carry him back to the prison of the orphanage.

The Kashmir-born Sarin directs "A Shine of Rainbows" without fuss or affectation, almost at the cost of giving his indie production the personality of a made-for-TV movie.

But Sarin's cinematography captures enough of the rough Irish landscape to give the movie scope and depth, and his screenplay (with Catherine Spear and Dennis Foon, based on Lillian Beckwith's novel) packs enough supernatural elements to suggest a higher power might be manipulating human events.

Perhaps it's no surprise that Sarin also directed the 2000 Christian-themed Rapture drama "Left Behind."

'A Shine of Rainbows'Rating: #9733; #9733; #9733; Starring: Aidan Quinn, Connie Nielsen, John BellDirected by: Vic SarinOther: A FreeStyle Releasing release. Rated PG. 101 minutesFalse20001333Tomas (John Bell) has a tough time getting along with his adoptive dad (Aidan Quinn) in "A Shine of Rainbows." False