“The Miracle Club” is set in the past, and, perhaps appropriately, it’s an old-time kind of movie.

It has a family resemblance to dozens of English and Irish films that have come out over the past 30 years. Yet it’s not imitative, and it succeeds on its own terms, with notable performances by Laura Linney, Kathy Bates and Maggie Smith.

One thing “The Miracle Club” doesn’t do, which worse movies of this sort often try to do: It does not attempt to make its working-class characters cute. The people in this film, both the major and minor characters, are tough. They’re hard and insular, and neither the script, the soundtrack nor the direction tries to convince us that they’re adorable curmudgeons.

It takes place in 1967 Ireland in the aftermath of the death of a local woman, a friend of Lily (Smith) and Eileen (Bates). They’re preparing for her funeral, when the dead woman’s long-lost daughter comes back to town for the first time since 1927. Once upon a time, Chrissie (Linney) was a teenager who had to leave town in a hurry. She went to the United States, where she lost her Irish accent, and now she has come back — sounding exactly like Laura Linney.

From the older women’s fraught reaction to Chrissie, we know that there’s some history there. Lily and Eileen are not just unhappy to see her. They’re disoriented and disturbed by her sudden reappearance, as if Chrissie is threatening to make them face things long buried and covered over.

The big event of the movie and in the lives of the women is that the local priest is taking them on a mini-vacation to Lourdes, the town in the French Pyrenees famous since the mid-19th century for being a site for miracles. “The Miracle Club” makes a point of showing how Lourdes has become a commercial hub, with scores of shops selling trinkets and souvenirs. But it leaves open the possibility that this could still be a place for miracles.

Because it’s not a travelogue, the movie doesn’t pull back and give an overview of the region, but a little more of the local scenery wouldn’t have hurt. Lourdes is nestled in the High Pyrenees, close to some of the most breathtaking mountain views in France. These are mountains that make you just want to stop and look at them for a while — or perhapsdrive a motorcycle off of them,if you’re Tom Cruise.

The idea of people’s past deeds coming back to haunt them is a familiar dramatic trope, but there’s nothing cliched in the treatment here. As Lily, Smith plays a woman living with guilt that has been locked up and compounding for years. She can put up a good front, but in the deepest part of her, she’s sad and withdrawn.

Bates, by contrast, plays Eileen as almost irrational with guilt and bitterness. Bates gives a wild, flailing performance in the best sense, and she makes an interesting contrast with Linney, who lopes into the film as a kind of spirit of quiet understanding. It’s interesting to see how much history Linney conveys about Chrissie with just little hints from the script.

“The Miracle Club” won’t rock your world, but it’s a nice movie. There’s always a place for nice movies.

Reach Mick LaSalle: mlasalle@sfchronicle.com