Released on DVD & Blu-ray from Mon 13 Jan
Kieran Evans / UK / 2012 / 95 mins
[rating:4/5]
BAFTA nominated Kieran Evans' adaptation of Niall Griffiths' novel Kelly + Victor is not a first date film, filled as it is with explicit sex scenes featuring practices that are usually considered outside the norm. Any description of the details would make it sound sensational, and yet the treatment of the subject matter is unusually sensitive, poetic even. Beneath all the blood, sweat and tears, Kelly + Victor is an achingly tender love story.
Antonia Campbell-Hughes, familiar as Jack Dee's daughter in Lead Balloon, delivers a strikingly raw performance as Kelly. Rail-thin and soft-spoken, she is cloaked in melancholic vulnerability. Julian Morris (veteran of ER and 24) has a less dramatic though equally important role to play as Kelly's devoted suitor Victor, a protective counterbalance to her emotional damage. They meet in a nightclub and start a passionate relationship that helps them transcend the mundanity of their workaday lives. To reveal any further details would be to risk spoiling a surprisingly powerful film.
One of the most interesting things about Kelly + Victor is the soundtrack. From the lush classical music playing over early scenes in the nightclub to the clever deconstruction and looping use of a single track for the sex scenes, the soundscape is used here to unusually powerful effect. Birdsong and nature sounds are magnified, distorted to hint at the threat beneath the sylvan surface, and of course there is the austere indie beauty of the Viking Moses track "Dancing by the Water Day" which Victor includes on a mix tape for Kelly and which plays over the film's devastating final scene.
Kelly + Victor is an intense experience and rarely easy to watch, but viewers who aren't afraid of a little heartbreak will be well rewarded. The running time is just over ninety minutes
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