The names haven't been changed in "Philomena." It's a true story and a remarkable one.
In style, it's a sedate tale of a woman's search for the son taken from her many years before. But go beyond the manner of its telling and you find a story of cruelty and evil, of shocking acts committed under a veneer of civility and sanctity.
Steve Coogan, who co-adapted the screenplay from the book by Martin Sixsmith, plays Sixsmith, a middle-aged political writer who finds himself at a career crossroads.
A potential human-interest story falls into his lap, and he decides to pursue it only because he is at loose ends. He meets Philomena Lee, a woman of about 70 who has kept a secret for 50 years: As a teenager, she gave birth to a son and went to live in a convent. When the boy was 3 years old, he was adopted, and she never saw him again.
Judi Dench plays Philomena, a rather simple woman who lives just down the road from the Irish convent that screwed up her life.
It's a character with many potential pitfalls for an actress, all of which Dench avoids as though it were easy. She doesn't sentimentalize Philomena. She gives her a certain nobility without making her noble.
Philomena is not nearly as intelligent as Dench, but Dench never steps back to let us see she knows it. At the same time, she finds humor in Philomena's gullibility and in her comical delight in romance novels.
Dench finds a precise characterization of wisdom through simplicity and past suffering — and of the detriments of simplicity and past suffering, as well.
Her performance is filled with many moments that will have audiences savoring her reactions and reading her mental processes. Dench is so unfussy and so good.
The first stop in their search for the lost son is the convent. The new woman in charge, who wears a modern habit and an ingratiating manner, tells Philomena that she cannot help with her search, but she can help her with her suffering.
This is good enough for Philomena, whose bone-deep probity makes her the least suspicious person on Earth.
However, Sixsmith, with his reporter's nose for news, knows something is off. He doesn't know what or exactly how, but he knows this isn't right.
Nuns often get unfair treatment in popular culture, when in real life they do much good. But "Philomena" tells a true story, and the deeper it goes, the more appalling it becomes.
The details will be best discovered during the movie, but in general terms, it's difficult not to see the behavior of some of these nuns as downright evil.
What's particularly shocking is the ability of some of these women to see the unwed mothers in their charge as almost subhuman, as outside the realm of normal consideration. The result was an epic distortion of Christianity, with people lobbing first and second stones when they had no business even getting near a rock.
"Philomena" is a wiser movie than it seems, with much to say about justice and forgiveness and the healing of wounds over time. Actually, it says next to nothing about any of those themes; it just implies its messages with a light hand.
Equally light and deft is the hand of Stephen Frears, who directs with his usual meticulous insight into the specifics of human interaction.
As Sixsmith, Coogan is our doorway not only into the story but every development of the story. As he sees Philomena, so do we, and he is an excellent conduit — and surrogate.
An actor of subtlety and exasperated humor, he is a worthy acting companion for Dench, even as he consistently serves her up for us like a tenor stepping behind a great soprano during a curtain call.
(Mick LaSalle is the San Francisco Chronicle's movie critic. E-mail: mlasalle@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @MickLaSalle)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)
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