God's Own Country (2017) Directed by Francis Lee
6B
Yorkshire farm boy Johnny is stuck with his lot. With an ailing, stern father and dour grandmother, he has nothing to look forward to except a life of toil and misery. Then Gheorghe, a temporary farmhand from Romania, is hired to provide short-term help, and slowly an attraction blooms between them.
God's Own Country is a gritty, grimy, gay romance that provides something of a contemporary take on the British "kitchen-sink" dramas of the late '50s and '60s. The national self-hate evident in the early films is replaced here by a believable portrait of the realistic, wildly unglamourous toil that goes with working on a small country farm. In fact, I found out more about animal husbandry and beasty orifices than I ever really wanted to know. While the drudgery of daily living is somewhat mitigated by the often beautiful English countryside, Johnny is fortunate to have found someone with whom to share what otherwise would be a wretched existence. However, being not especially bright, he takes a long time to smarten up.
God's Own Country is a good movie, but writer/director Francis Lee is a tad too obvious with some of his interventions. Gheorghe seems a little too good to be true, and the seemingly happy ending struck me as if not false exactly, then certainly a bit of a stretch. Still, Lee has directed an impressive first feature, and it will be worth waiting to see what he does next.