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In the 2009 movie Ondine, directed by Neil Jordan, the character Ondine (played by Alicja Bachleda) is not actually a selkie, despite the film’s heavy leaning into Irish folklore for most of its runtime.
The movie functions as a "grounded fairy tale," where the magical elements are eventually given a harsh, realistic explanation. Here are the specific details regarding the reveal:
Ondine is actually a woman named Joanna, who is a drug mule from Romania. She ended up in the water not because she shed her seal skin, but because she was attempting to escape from the police and her criminal associates during a drug run that went wrong.
Throughout the film, Syracuse’s daughter, Annie, believes Ondine has buried her seal skin to remain human. In reality, the "skin" that Ondine buries in the garden is a wetsuit and a bag of heroin. She was trying to hide the evidence of the smuggling operation. When Annie eventually digs it up, she believes she is looking at a magical artifact, but the contents are later revealed to be illegal narcotics.
Annie is convinced that the strange songs Ondine sings are in an ancient selkie tongue. It is later revealed that Ondine is simply speaking and singing in Romanian. Because Annie is a child looking for magic to cope with her illness (kidney failure) and her father’s alcoholism, she misinterprets the foreign language as supernatural.
A mysterious, dark-haired man eventually comes to the village looking for Ondine. In the selkie myth, this would be her husband from the sea coming to claim her. In reality, this man is Alex, a violent drug trafficker and Joanna's former boyfriend/associate. He tracked her down to recover the drugs she stole (the "skin").
Syracuse (Colin Farrell) begins catching massive amounts of fish whenever Ondine is on the boat, which Annie attributes to selkie magic. The movie suggests this is largely a combination of coincidence and Ondine’s own effort to help Syracuse, though the film leaves a small, poetic window open for the viewer to wonder if "luck" is its own kind of magic.
Summary:
While the film uses the cinematography and the daughter’s perspective to make the audience want to believe in the myth, the climax reveals a gritty crime drama. Ondine is a human woman escaping a life of crime, and the "magic" was a narrative constructed by a young girl to bring hope to her family.
The summary conflates Alex with the villain Vladic. Alex is actually the ex-wife's boyfriend whose death provides the kidney transplant that saves Annie's life.
The summary fails to identify Vladic as the antagonist.
In the movie Ondine, the character is not a selkie. She is a Romanian woman named Joanna who was working as a drug mule. The "seal skin" she buries is actually a backpack containing heroin. The "magical language" she speaks is Romanian. The man who comes looking for her is Vladic, her drug dealer/pimp, not her husband from the sea. The character Alex is a separate person (the boyfriend of Syracuse's ex-wife) who dies in a car crash; his death is significant because his kidney is a match for Syracuse's daughter, Annie, saving her life.