This Is My Father is the first collaboration of the three Quinn brothers -- writer/director Paul, cinematographer Declan, and actor Aidan. With a resume that includes acclaimed turns in big-screen projects such as Desperately Seeking Susan and Avalon -- as well as an Emmy-nominated performance in the televised AIDS drama An Early Frost -- heartthrob Aidan is easily the best known member of the Quinn clan. But his two older brothers have distinguished themselves, too. Declan is the talented lensman behind Leaving Las Vegas and Vanya On 42nd Street, among other films, and Paul is a veteran Chicago stage actor and director. All three brothers served as executive producers on the film.

Paul Quinn based his screenplay for This Is My Father on a story his mother recalled from her childhood in Ireland. Unfortunately, the finished film often has the qualities of a half-remembered tale -- anecdotal, lacking in detail, and never fully realized. But in the end, the story's verisimilitude and poignancy -- helped along by several understated but powerful performances -- carry the film and the day.

James Caan, who is given his first chance in years to really act and who comports himself very well, plays Kieran Johnson, a Chicago-area schoolteacher who has lost his passion. A widower and childless, he no longer communicates with his students, fails at playing surrogate father to his adolescent nephew, and fights with his sister over the care of their bedridden mother, Fiona. Unable to speak, the victim of a debilitating stroke, Fiona's silence only masks even further long-held secrets about her past, secrets Kieran begins to uncover when he discovers a photo of a young Fiona and a man he assumes to be the father he never knew.

With no answers forthcoming from Fiona, Kieran travels to Ireland -- nephew in tow -- to discover the identity of the man in the photo. In the little village of his mother's youth, Kieran meets a "traveler" who, after some prodding, begins to tell him of the love affair between the spoiled, prideful Fiona Flynn (Moya Farrelly) and the "poorhouse bastard" Kieran O'Day (Aidan Quinn).

In 1939, the 17-year-old Fiona is sent home early from boarding school and begins a romance with O'Day, an older but simpler man who farms the land rented by his foster parents. It is one of the most crippling failures of Quinn's screenplay that while the chemistry between the performers works, you never completely buy the romance because you don't understand the initial attraction. Why would a young girl of privileged background fall for a much older, less-refined farmer? Not that such a relationship is unthinkable, but Quinn never explains it.

Like all great lovers, Fiona and Kieran face mighty obstacles. The widow Flynn (Gina Moxley) doesn't think much of her daughter spending time with an older man of limited prospects. And the local clergy, distrustful of any expression of love, sees nothing but the prospect for sin. Eventually, these two forces combine to set our two lovers on a course toward a tragic conclusion that seems out of proportion with what has preceded it.