How to watch Four Letters of Love in New Zealand
Keep the tissues handy for this handsome Irish literary adaptation.
Irish author Niall Williams’ first novel, 1997’s Four Letters of Love, comes to the big screen in the form of this handsome weepie.
How to watch Four Letters of Love in New Zealand
Four Letters of Love is screening in New Zealand cinemas from July 24, 2025.
What is Four Letters of Love about?
Director Polly Steele (The Mountain Within Me), working from Williams’ own script, brings us this generation-spanning tale that takes us back to the 70’s to follow the lives of two young people, Nicholas and Isabel. While Nicholas’s father follows his muse and abandons his family to become a painter, Issy is packed off to a convent school, from which she is promptly expelled.
These two are meant for each other (apparently—there’s not a lot of detail about this one out there) but how will they ever come together? Well, it’s one of those destiny dealios, so they’re bound to.
The cast of Four Letters of Love
Fionn O’Shea is Nicholas Coughlan; Ann Skelly is Isabel Gore; Pierce Brosnan is Nicholas’ artistically inclined father, William Coughlan; Imelda May is Bette Coughlan; Gabriel Byrne is Muiris Gore, Isabel’s father; Helene Bonham Carter is Margaret Gore, her mother; Dónal Finn is Sean Gore; Isabel’s brother; with Olwen Fouéré, Michelle Lucy, Pat Shortt, Norma Sheahan, Mary O’Driscoll, Johnny French, and Billy Lyons in support.
Four Letters of Love trailer
Why we’re excited about Four Letters of Love
It feels like a perfect matinee fodder for the pensioner set, and maybe that’ll dictate whether it makes it onto your watch list. But that’s a cracking cast, the book is a beloved classic, and all those gorgeous Irish locations are pretty easy on the eyes. If that sounds good to you, Four Letters of Love might be just the mascara-ruining ticket. Take tissues, though. There’s a fair chance you’ll need them.
