Starring Josh O’Connor, Alec Secareanu, Ian Hart and Gemma Jones
U.K., 2017
Two farmhands in rural England find themselves falling first in lust and then in love with each other, despite their differences – one has never left the farm and is resigned to a dreary life of half-assing and drinking, and the other has left his Romanian home and takes pride in his work as he tries to build a new life for himself.
Of all the movies I’ve watched for Romancefest this year, I feel like this one has the strongest transition for a central character. It’s a rough watch at first – the film is unblinking, gritty, realistic and unflattering when it examines what the main character’s life is like at the start of the story. The sex is graphic, the hangovers are graphic, the farm work with animals is graphic. But then, as he falls in love, an at first subtle and then obvious change comes over both the character and the movie and it becomes an uplifting story of how one person can spread affection to another, and then that one get spread affection, until affection in general just starts spreading all over the place. Without giving too much away, I will say the ending is not as bleak as the beginning, and the bleak beginning is sort of what ends up earning the ending in the first place. It’s hard to belive this is the writer/director’s first feature because it’s an instant classic – or should be, anyway.
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