God's Own Country (2017) was directed by Francis Lee. It was the opening night movie at ImageOut, the wonderful Rochester LGBT Film Festival. For me, the plot was just "Brokeback Mountain" in Yorkshire. (The film was introduced with the admonition that it wasn't "Brokeback Mountain," but if you see two young men who are sexually intimate in a hostile rural setting, you don't think of Pride and Prejudice or Jane Eyre.)
Josh O'Connor plays Johnny Saxby, who is so bored and frustrated with his work on his father's farm that his only reaction is to get dead drunk every night. Alec Secareanu portrays Gheorghe Ionescu, a Romanian immigrant who comes to work on the farm during lambing season. Both men are fine actors, so they can keep the moving moving forward. (They can keep it moving forward, but they can't make it better.)
Gemma Jones portrays Deidre Saxby, Johnny's mother. She is a consummate professional, and she brings life to the movie.
This film will work better in a theater, because of the beautiful Yorkshire scenery. I just wish someone in the film had a conversation about something other than fixing the fence or being hung over. To my recollection, the only real conversation is when Johnny meets a girl he knew, and tells her she's a snob because she's going to the university.
We saw this film at Rochester's excellent Little Theatre. The LGBT Film Festival is superb, but I didn't enjoy this movie. I made the same general comments about "Brokeback Mountain," and nobody found my review "useful." The film is carrying a very strong IMDb rating of 7.8. OK--other people enjoyed it more than I did. I just call them the way I see them.
Josh O'Connor plays Johnny Saxby, who is so bored and frustrated with his work on his father's farm that his only reaction is to get dead drunk every night. Alec Secareanu portrays Gheorghe Ionescu, a Romanian immigrant who comes to work on the farm during lambing season. Both men are fine actors, so they can keep the moving moving forward. (They can keep it moving forward, but they can't make it better.)
Gemma Jones portrays Deidre Saxby, Johnny's mother. She is a consummate professional, and she brings life to the movie.
This film will work better in a theater, because of the beautiful Yorkshire scenery. I just wish someone in the film had a conversation about something other than fixing the fence or being hung over. To my recollection, the only real conversation is when Johnny meets a girl he knew, and tells her she's a snob because she's going to the university.
We saw this film at Rochester's excellent Little Theatre. The LGBT Film Festival is superb, but I didn't enjoy this movie. I made the same general comments about "Brokeback Mountain," and nobody found my review "useful." The film is carrying a very strong IMDb rating of 7.8. OK--other people enjoyed it more than I did. I just call them the way I see them.