The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
Josh O'Connor, Alec Secăreanu find love in God's Own Country (Sept 1 2017 UK)
Aloysius J. Gleek:
[youtube=950,550]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0c5vqVK6t0[/youtube]
GOD'S OWN COUNTRY Official Trailer (2017) LGBT
Josh O'Connor (Johnny Saxby) Exclusive Interview
Published on Aug 29, 2017
Stefan Pape from HeyUGuys interviews Josh O'Connor for his movie God's Own Country which is directed by Francis Lee and also stars Alec Secăreanu.
Plot: Spring. Yorkshire. Young farmer Johnny Saxby numbs his daily frustrations with binge drinking and casual sex, until the arrival of a Romanian migrant worker
for lambing season ignites an intense relationship that sets Johnny on a new path.
[youtube=950,550]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhgJ5PCA6_Q[/youtube]
GOD'S OWN COUNTRY Official Trailer (2017) LGBT
Director Francis Lee and Alec Secăreanu (as Gheorghe)
Exclusive Interview
Published on Aug 29, 2017
Stefan Pape from HeyUGuys interviews writer/director Francis Lee and actor Alec Secăreanu for their movie God's Own Country.
The interview took place in Alec's native Romania at the 2017 Transylvanian Film Festival.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God%27s_Own_Country_(2017_film)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5635086/
gattaca:
--- Quote from: brian on September 03, 2017, 02:55:26 pm ---One couple left after about the 2nd sex scene, they should have read the promo material. It is much more explicit than BBM but I guess that is again a sign of how movies have developed in 10 years.
I enjoyed "God's own country" but I would not put it on a level with BBM. It was better than "Call me by my name" but did not hit me emotionally in the same way as "The man in the Orange shirt" nor of course BBM.
--- End quote ---
Thanks for the review! I'm psyched.
Not surprising. If the m/m sex was more explicit than the 2nd night in the tent in BBM, then there's many people in the US who should avoid the film. When BBM showed in the theaters here, I saw a m/f couple leave after the 2nd night in the tent... and they were were as disruptive as they could during their exit. talking and complaining during their exit from near the front of the theater.
V.
Aloysius J. Gleek:
Fifty years after the Sexual Offences Act partially legalised male homosexuality in Britain, the parallels with Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain show how far attitudes towards LGBT people have changed – the sensibility of Francis Lee's God's Own Country is decidedly post-gay. Yet the explicit references to Ang Lee’s western are unnecessary – God's Own Country is one of the most exciting British debuts of the past decade.
http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/reviews-recommendations/gods-own-country-francis-lee-males-love-dales
God's Own Country
unites males in the Dales
Both post-gay and pre-Brexit, Francis Lee’s debut feature is anything
but a straightforward coming-out tale. Instead it’s an eerily beautiful
love story between two men and the wild Yorkshire landscape.
by Alex Davidson
31 August 2017
Alec Secăreanu, on top, and Josh O'Connor in God's Own Country
An early scene in Francis Lee’s debut feature, in which Romanian migrant worker Gheorghe (Alec Secăreanu) washes semi-naked in the background while Johnny (Josh O’Connor), the moody gay son of a Yorkshire farmer, resists gazing at him, is a clear reference to an identically framed scene in Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain (2005). At one point, a character inhales the scent of another’s shirt, recalling the ending of Lee’s film.
Fifty years after the Sexual Offences Act partially legalised male homosexuality in Britain, the parallels with Brokeback Mountain show how far attitudes towards LGBT people have changed – the sensibility of God's Own Country is decidedly post-gay. Yet the explicit references to Lee’s western are unnecessary – God's Own Country is one of the most exciting British debuts of the past decade, and homages to better-known films threaten to distract from Lee’s powerful vision.
A straightforward coming-out story this is not. None of the characters in the film reacts negatively to the fact that the two men are having a relationship. Johnny’s father Martin (Ian Hart) and grandmother Deirdre (Gemma Jones) have too many other concerns, related to ill health and their failing farm, to acknowledge the men’s love, though the grandmother’s wry half-smile as she is dismissed from their company suggests she may know more than she lets on.
The hatred a couple of the villagers show towards Gheorghe is motivated by xenophobia rather than homophobia. Johnny’s self-loathing at the start of the film manifests itself through his unwanted work and family responsibilities rather than internalised homophobia, though he clearly fears intimacy, as he bluntly rejects the suggestion of a date with one of his recent sexual conquests (“We? No.”).
Lee has explored the plight of Yorkshire farmers in his short films: the fictional The Farmer’s Wife (2012) and the documentary The Last Smallholder (2014) both followed farmers threatened by hardship and the changing landscape around them. Despite his expressed aim of portraying the harsh, unforgiving Yorkshire landscape as it really is, from the opening shot of the farm at dawn the countryside is tinged with eerie beauty. The relationship between the two men isn’t the only romance in the film, as the camera slowly falls in love with rural Yorkshire, exploding in the end credits into a gorgeous colour montage of archive footage showing farmhands at work in the fields, beautifully accompanied by Patrick Wolf's haunting song The Days.
This sequence is glorious, perhaps a little foolishly romantic, but the sudden, unexpected burst of dreamy nostalgia is a welcome moment of elation. The title of the film, a phrase affectionately used to describe Yorkshire, is devoid of any irony in these closing minutes.
O’Connor and Secăreanu are superb, with O’Connor conveying the vulnerability of the bitter, potentially unsympathetic Johnny – for while it’s clear what the kind, smart Gheorghe gives to Johnny, what the latter has to offer him is more abstract. No one is more hostile to Gheorghe, initially, than Johnny. He is openly racist: “Are you a Paki or something?” he asks him, before going on to call him “gypsy” and “gyppo”.
At first, Gheorghe’s attraction to Johnny is a combination of lust and an apparent need to rescue the vulnerable (he saves a runt lamb, literally breathing life into its lungs). Secăreanu’s deadpan style adds a dash of humour to some of the later scenes, which recall Aki Kaurismäki. Deirdre and Martin also thaw as the film progresses – a key scene, in which one of them simply says “thank you”, is as moving as the young men’s romance.
Production of the film began in the run-up to Brexit, the potential consequences of which haunt the story, though Britain’s imminent exit from the European Union is never mentioned. From the hostility shown towards Gheorghe by strangers in the local pub to the struggles of farmers, whose support from EU subsidies may soon be taken away, the stance of the film would seem to favour the pro-remain camp.
While Martin and Deirdre cling to outmoded, traditional farming methods, it is the migrant worker who suggests new ways of operating that may save their farm from disaster. God's Own Country, alongside recent British films such as Sally Potter’s The Party, a satire riffing on class and politics, and Gurinder Chadha’s end-of-empire drama Viceroy’s House, is surely destined to be framed within the context of Brexit in future years.
UK release date 1 September 2017
Distributor Picturehouse Entertainment
Production companies: Shudder Films, Inflammable Films
Cast: Josh O'Connor, Alec Secăreanu, Gemma Jones, Ian Hart, Harry Lister Smith, Patsy Ferran, Melanie Kilburn, Liam Thomas
Director-screenwriter: Francis Lee
Producers: Manon Ardisson, Jack Tarling
Director of photography: Joshua James Richards
Production designer: Stephane Collonge
Costume designer: Sian Jenkins
Editor: Chris Wyatt
Music: A Winged Victory for the Sullen
104 minutes
United Kingdom 2017
Certificate 15
picturehouseentertainment.co.uk/films/gods-own-country/
Aloysius J. Gleek:
[youtube=999,625]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdfIYwiIzlU[/youtube]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdfIYwiIzlU
GOD'S OWN COUNTRY (2017) TIFF Original
Alec Secăreanu (as Gheorghe)
Exclusive Interview
Published on Nov 3, 2017
Enjoy the exclusive interview with Alec Secăreanu as he discusses preparing for his starring role in Francis Lee's new film God's Own Country.
Set in the remote farming country of North Yorkshire, Francis Lee's quietly assured feature debut focuses on Johnny (Josh O'Connor), who numbs the frustration of his lonely existence on his family's farm with nightly binge-drinking at the local pub and casual sex. When a handsome Romanian migrant worker (Alec Secăreanu) arrives to take up temporary work on the farm, Johnny suddenly finds himself having to deal with emotions he has never felt before. As the two begin working closely together during lambing season, an intense relationship starts to form, one which could change Johnny's life forever.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God%27s_Own_Country_(2017_film)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5635086/
Aloysius J. Gleek:
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