The Seventh Stream is a love story with a fairy-tale quality that no doubt will enchant many viewers. Others may find there is something not quite right about having a seal turn into a ravishing human beauty. A seal is no mermaid, after all, nor a foam-born Aphrodite. It is a barking, flipper-clapping, balancer of balls. Nevertheless, director and scriptwriter John Gray apparently liked the idea of a seal woman so much that all of the action in the film depends on how humans respond to her and she to them. Fortunately, when the seal becomes human, she is gorgeous--with long black hair, plaintive eyes, and a graceful, elegant bearing. Lovely Saffron Burrows is well cast as the beguiling young woman. There is about her an ethereality that makes her ideal for the part. American Scott Glenn also performs well. Portraying a lonely Irish fisherman (Owen Quinn) who pines for his long-dead wife, Glenn easily earns the sympathy of the audience with his painful ruminations about the irretrievable past. When he falls in love with the seal woman--whom he calls Mairead--he gives the audience reason to cheer. His Irish accent and fisherman's persona--written into every crag of his rugged countenance--seem authentic. Fiona Shaw is excellent as the benevolent shopkeeper with designs on Quinn, and Joseph Kelly makes the seal myth believable as the wizened blind man, Eamon Dunhill. The cinematography captures the quaintness of an early 20th Century Irish fishing village, as well as the rugged beauty of the Irish coast. As for Gray's idea of turning a seal into a beautiful woman, well, let us be thankful that he did not choose a walrus.