Four Letters of Love draws its inspiration directly from Niall Williams’ acclaimed debut novel of the same name. What makes this adaptation particularly intimate is that Williams himself penned the screenplay, bringing his prose to life on screen. “It’s a strange and beautiful thing to return to a story you wrote so long ago and find it still breathing.”

From award winning film-maker Polly Steele (Let Me Go, Elton John: Tantrums & Tiaras) comes the
magical, lyrical and deeply romantic Irish story Four Letters of Love, based on Niall Williams
international bestselling novel.

The film explores the tension between faith and doubt, the beauty of missed chances, and the quiet miracles that shape our lives. It’s described as “magical, lyrical and deeply romantic,” echoing the tone of the novel.

“One day I woke with a first sentence,” says Niall Williams who wrote the book which he now adapts
for the screen. “‘When I was 12 years old, God spoke to my father for the first time.’ I had no idea
what God said or what happened next. I went to a room in the cottage here and wrote that sentence
every day for weeks. I knew it was the beginning of something, but what?”

And so began the genesis of Four Letters of Love, a book that would live its own love story, finding
a wide, global audience. “I guess that in the end what counted was that I believed the story was out
there,” continues Williams, “or in there, and that if I kept showing up I would find my way to it. I knew
I wanted to write about love, thought I would only get one chance to say all I could about every kind
of love, between fathers and daughters, mothers and daughters, sisters and brothers, husband and
wife, lovers, what Edna O Brien eventually called ‘a mosaic of loves,’ and that all I had to do was stay
in the chair.”

Four Letters of Love was published in 1997 but its journey to the screen did not arrive quickly.

Williams’ novel was celebrated for its poetic language and spiritual undertones. It tells the story of Nicholas and Isabel, two people seemingly destined for one another, whose lives are shaped by loss, longing, and the mysterious forces that guide human connection. The film retains this emotional core, weaving together themes of divine calling, artistic yearning, and the redemptive power of love.

“The making of any film, the transference of words into light, seems a kind of miracle to me,” says Niall
Williams. “Over the years of the making, I have often thought of the image of a relay, but instead of
passing a baton, what you are passing from one to the next is a lit flame. It can go out at any
moment. Many directors were interested over the years, but Polly Steele is the one who came to
my door in County Clare and said she would carry it through to the end. And for seven years or so,
she has”.

“From our first meeting, I could see that she understood the novel profoundly. The mix of mystery,
destiny, nature, human suffering and our longing for meaning that each course through the novel
provide its own challenge, but Polly had no hesitation. We talked though all aspects of the story,
structure, images, visual language, music, and potential cast. And for the years of the making that
followed there was hardly a week when we weren’t discussing some element of it.”

The cinematic quality to Four Letters of Love was already in existence in the novel and had been
keenly felt by readers. Perhaps it was inevitable that the big-screen adaptation would happen. Niall
Williams admits that ever since the novel came out in 1997, “and in all the years since then. it has
always been the subject of talk about becoming a film”. It was something that readers kept
manifesting as well: “Very many people and from as many countries have told me they have ‘seen’
the film, and many believed they were the ones to make it.”

“Because it is such a personal novel, and maybe as peculiar as myself,” Williams continues, “I always
thought that if it happened, I would have to attempt the adaptation myself. To that end I began to
study as many scripts as I could and learn the very different discipline of screenwriting. I found the
challenges and the restrictions refreshing, for your imagination rises where it meets walls, and
‘How do we make this work? has an added zing when you know that the scene is actually going to
be shot, with these lines and these extraordinary actors.”

With any adaptation, changes have to be made to make the story sing on screen in a different way
to how life existed on the page. “In the novel the character of Nicholas is 12 on the day his father
comes home from the Civil Service and says God wants him to be a painter,” says Niall Williams
about some of the time shifts that became necessary. “A longer timeframe is in the novel. For the
film this needed to be condensed and concentrated. It gives the first section of the film a charged
intensity. As with the novel we move back and forth between the urban and rural stories, between
the male one and the female one, between the one where God arrived and the one where he
departed, but in the film the choices of when we cut from to the other are sometimes different, as
the rhythm of the story dictates. Overall, I think the film very accurately captures the feeling of the
novel.”

Nicholas and Isabel are made for each other, but fate does not always choose the easiest path to
true love. As destiny pulls them together, so do family, passion, and faith drive them apart.
Nicholas’ father, William, comes home one day to shatter his family’s quiet, modest life. He tells
them that after a moment of divine revelation, he has decided to dedicate his life to painting. He
quits his job and sets off for the Western coast, leaving his shell-shocked wife and son to fend for
themselves. Meanwhile, Isabel and her family live a charmed existence on a remote Western island,
their house full of music and poetry. When tragedy strikes and her brother suffers a terrible
accident, the music stops, and Isabel’s parents decide in their grief to send Isabel to a convent
school on the mainland. The young lovers embark on their journeys of heartache and misplaced love before fate contrives to pull the threads of their lives together. When they meet, it will be like a miracle.

Author’s Statement – Niall Williams

Although when I wrote the novel I was already a convert to one of its central ideas: that there is
someone out there who is the other half of your soul, the other aspect, that this will at all times
seem unlikely, that all legendary obstacles will come in the way, it has taken me more than twenty
years and the experience of watching the novel try to find its way into film to learn.

Because this is a story of faith and doubt, vision and blindness, it has seemed strangely apt that,
though over the years readers from many countries, and in many languages, have said they could
‘see’ the film, it remained invisible. It seems to me that all artists know the story’s battle between
hope and despair and must work secretly believing in that someone who will see, and grasp what
you are trying to do. With this film I am fortunate enough now to feel in the company of many of
those someones, and to realise I was all the time only waiting for Polly Steele to knock at my door.

Another aspect of this—how a work of art comes with its own life, and in its own time—has also
been borne out by the book’s journey towards the screen. Almost from the first, the novel moved
beyond Ireland and Irishness in general. As it began to be translated into other languages, I started
to receive letters from readers in different corners of the world, and what struck me was the
number of times a reader, from Brazil say, would say ‘This feels like a Latin American novel,’ only
for the next one, from Jerusalem, to say ‘This story could be of my life here.’

In the end what I have come to understand is that, though born out of and set in Ireland, the book
is what the late John Hurt in his introduction of the Modern Classic edition called ‘a complete world
of its own.’ I take this to be the definition of the universal. And in the universe of the story, where
God comes and goes without explanation, where mystery is as much a part of love as of death, and
our every moment is either destined or not, acceptance is the wisdom of suffering, and love the
ultimate triumph of life.

From Page to Screen: How Niall Williams’ Soulful Prose Became the Heart of Four Letters of Love

When a novelist adapts their work for the screen, something quietly magical happens. With Four Letters of Love, Irish author Niall Williams steps into that rare creative territory—translating the emotional cadence of his acclaimed novel into a cinematic language without losing the soul of the original.

Williams began his career co-authoring non-fiction with his wife Christine Breen before making his mark in fiction with Four Letters of Love in 1997—a debut that became an international bestseller, translated into over twenty languages.

Since then, Williams has carved a unique space in Irish literature with novels like History of the Rain (longlisted for the Booker Prize) and This Is Happiness. His work often dances between faith and doubt, past and present, and is grounded in the rhythms of rural Irish life.

With Four Letters of Love finally making its way to the screen—under his own pen—the story finds a new heartbeat without losing its original soul.

“Stories like this aren’t built—they’re listened to,” Williams once said of his process. Known for his poetic storytelling and spiritual themes, his screenplay mirrors this approach: intimate, character-driven, and attentive to the quiet moments that shape lives. By adapting his novel, Williams preserves the rhythm and longing of his prose, ensuring the film doesn’t simply retell the story—it inhabits it.

“What drew me to Four Letters of Love was its quiet boldness—the idea that love and destiny might be written not in thunderclaps, but in the hush between two strangers passing. Niall’s script had that hush. It moved like a prayer, and my role was to listen closely. I wanted the film to feel like memory—fragile, luminous, and full of longing,” said director Polly Steele, whose previous work explored mental health and emotional healing, complements Williams’ lyrical script with a restrained yet cinematic lens. Her touch brings visual nuance to the spiritual undercurrents of the story, allowing scenes to breathe rather than rush toward resolution.

Given Williams’s body of work since 1997, it’s likely that his understanding of love, loss, and spiritual longing has matured. That evolution may have subtly reshaped how he approached the screenplay—not by altering the story’s essence, but by deepening its emotional textures. The novel’s themes of divine calling, artistic yearning, and the quiet choreography of fate remain intact, but the screenplay reportedly leans into visual storytelling and silence as much as dialogue, allowing space for reflection and ambiguity.

“In love everything changes, and continues changing all the time. There is no stillness, no stopped clock of the heart in which the moment of happiness holds forever, but only the constant whirring forward motion of desire and need, rising and falling, falling and rising, full of doubts then certainties that moment by moment change and become doubts again,” says Williams.

Director Polly Steele is an Award Winning Director renowned for her ability to weave sensitive narratives that capture both hearts and minds alike. This is reinforced by amongst many other awards and
nominations, Bentonville’s & Fairhope’s ‘Audience Choice Award’ for her feature ‘Let Me Go’, which
premiered at the Edinburgh Film Festival, starring Juliet Stevenson and Lucy Boynton.
Polly has successfully crafted films for all of the UK’s major broadcasters, & produced/developed
fiction as MD for Rocket Pictures, collaborating with industry icons Elton John and David Furnish.
Additionally, under her own banner, In Trust Films, Polly has a distinctive creative vision and
continues to produce stories that resonate deeply with audiences.

Polly recently completed a feature she Directed ‘Four Letters of Love’, starring Pierce Brosnan,
Helena Bonham Carter and Gabriel Byrne. Based on Niall Williams’ best-selling novel, the film is a
poignant Irish romance encompassing fate, faith and the power of true love. Polly imbues the
narrative with profound sensitivity, showcasing her mastery and strength as a Director. The result
is a deeply moving cinematic experience, to be released later this year.

Premiering at this years Edinburgh Film Festival is a feature length documentary Directed by Polly
for Universal Pictures entitled ‘The Mountain within Me’, featuring Ed Jackson author of “Lucky”,
ex-rugby player & director of the M2M Foundation.

Additional documentary Directing work has included BAFTA award winning Video Diaries (BBC),
Tantrums & Tiaras the inside story of Elton John’s life, shortlisted for a BAFTA (itv),
Kofi Annan –
The Eye of the Storm (BBC2),
Extraordinary People – the Worlds Youngest Surgeon, shortlisted
for the Grierson Award(C5), In the Arctic with Ewan McGregor, (Best Indie Documentary), Eastside
Story, a revealing portrait of Ray Lewis’s controversial Eastside Youth Leaders Academy and
BBC2’s Rich Russians in London.

As a visual artist, Polly had two series of video portraits commissioned. Her subjects included Tony
Benn, Jason Isaacs and star of The Wire, Michael K Williams. She has subsequently also shot a 2nd
series entitled WHO AM I, the portraits of eight women. Polly is also a trained life coach and mother of three.

© FLOL Limited / Port Pictures Limited 2024

---