Happy Death Day, The Party, and Irreplaceable You: Your Week In Film (February 19-25)

Boss baby: Happy Death Day is a smart horror that transcends its influences

The best and worst of this week's UK home entertainment releases on DVD, Blu-ray and digital. All the films mentioned are available to buy, rent and/or stream now, unless otherwise stated.

Ratings guide: WWWW - Wonderful  WWW - Worthwhile  WW - Watchable  W - Woeful

Jessica Rothe – the star of superior slasher flick Happy Death Day (DVD, Blu-ray, and VOD) WWW – reminds me of Buffy The Vampire Slayer-era Sarah Michelle Gellar. At 30, Rothe's quite a bit older than Gellar was in her TV pomp, but nevertheless exudes that same, unmistakeable "don't mess with me" vibe. It's one that somehow convinces you a short-arsed blonde girl (Rothe is 5" 4) could smash your face in without raising a sweat. 

Rothe's character, Tree (short for Theresa), is murdered by a killer in a cartoon baby mask but, instead of staying dead, wakes up in the college dorm room of Carter (Israel Broussard), the boy she'd gone home with in a drunken stupor the night before her "death". It turns out she has to relive the day leading up to her murder – which just happens to be her birthday – over and over again, until she solves the mystery of who killed her and why. 

I've railed against the increasing number of Groundhog Day copyists in this column before, but Christopher Landon's film is one that proves you don't necessarily have to be original as long as you get everything else right. And he does. 

Despite its stabby premise, Happy Death Day is actually a lot more like Harold Ramis's 1993 classic than the likes of Naked or When We First Met. For a start, it remembers that Bill Murray's character – Phil Connors – did not begin the film as a nice guy and passes on that trait to Tree. It doesn't matter that she's drunken and promiscuous, but her penchant for stealing other people's crushes/partners, and generally being rude and obnoxious, are decidedly off-putting. If her get-out-of-death free card offers Tree a way to solve the riddle of her murder, it also gives her the chance to smarten up her act and start treating people a little better, too (yes, Tree is handed a chance to grow – boom, tish!). At least she has an excuse for her crabby behaviour – she's still grieving for her mum, who'd died three years previously.

Landon (whose riotous Scouts Guide To The Zombie Apocalypse I enjoyed back in 2015) gives us a film that contains zero gore and almost no blood, but still manages to be an effective slice of horror. He understands how to build tension, he understands not to press the jump-scare button too many times, he understands the need for tight direction, a strong script and a decent cast to deliver it all. He's also a dab hand with a twist or two and the ones served up here are all satisfying and deliciously unexpected. In the final scene, he even takes a moment to fully acknowledge his movie's debt to Groundhog Dog and it's a comparison from which Happy Death Day emerges surprisingly well. Sequel, please.

Groundhog slay: Death stalks Jessica Rothe over and over again

Several recent films have sought to give the dark hypocrisies of liberal society a good kicking – The Killing Of A Sacred Deer, Happy End, and last year's Palme d'Or winner The Square being the most high-profile examples. Sally Potter's The Party (DVD, Blu-ray, and VOD) WW comes with similar intentions but lacks those other movies' inventiveness and off-kilter humour. Its staginess and length (barely 70 minutes) make the director's follow-up to 2012's Ginger & Rosa an unusual film, but its subject matter also feels a little old hat, especially in light of last year's UK general election, in which the kind of wishy-washy political centrism Potter seeks to skewer here, was roundly rejected at the ballot box. 

Janet (Kristin Scott Thomas) is an MP for an unnamed but clearly left-leaning political party, who has just been made shadow minister for health. To celebrate, she and husband Bill (Timothy Spall) have invited a few friends round for a soiree, including lesbian couple Martha and Jinny (Cherry Jones and Emily Mortimer), professional cynic April (Patricia Clarkson) and her new-age husband Gottfried (Bruno Ganz), plus Cillian Murphy's Tom, who has turned up without his wife but has brought both a gun and a bountiful supply of coke. Amidst the air-kisses and clink of champagne flutes, there's a certain tension in the air, and a series of announcements, starting with a doozy from Bill, soon turn the atmosphere toxic. 

Potter doesn't really give us fully-formed characters but a series of paper-thin vessels containing hypocrisies, resentments and betrayals. Tom is in finance so, naturally, he snorts coke and loves money, Gottfried is only a half-decent catchphrase away from being a character in a sitcom or sketch show, while April's presence confirms that "American" is still shorthand for a certain abrasiveness. You believe in the idea of these people but that's about as far as it goes. Worse still, if I hadn't already known Potter's intentions, I'd have assumed this was an attack on progressive politics from the right, as some of these characters could have stepped straight out of a Daily Mail editorial.

The Party's main strength lies in its performances, especially Spall, whose character is the only one with a modicum of nuance or complexity. In fact, everyone attacks their roles with real gusto, even if the two-dimensional people they're playing don't really deserve such commitment. Set entirely in one house and its garden, the smallness of its world works to the drama's advantage, accentuating the tension and panic as they build and build. I'm unsure why it's in black and white (a comment on the moral drabness of these characters' lives perhaps), but I did appreciate Potter's well-worked final twist and the clear double meaning of her title.

Secrets and lies: No one's having fun in The Party

It's only February but I've already seen 2018's worst movie. Irreplaceable You (Netflix) W stars Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Abbie, and Michiel Huisman as Sam, childhood sweethearts planning their wedding and keeping their fingers crossed she has fallen pregnant.

Unfortunately, it turns out Abbie isn't with child but with tumour, has stage-four cancer, and only a short time to live. Worried that Sam, a clutzy science teacher, will struggle to find another woman after she croaks, Abbie commences a campaign to find him a new girlfriend. She goes onto Tinder, conducts interviews, and even surreptitiously organises a "mixer" at an art gallery, in an attempt to snag her beloved a new gal. When Abbie isn't planning out the rest of Sam's life for him, she attends a support group populated by Kate McKinnon, Steve Coogan, and Christopher Walken, all of whom might be politely described as "slumming it".

It's supposed to be a dramedy but the comedy is weak and self-conscious, the dramatic elements springing from situations that frequently feel absurd and forced, with characters who are either insufferable, unrealistic, or both (death would be a blessing after five minutes in the company of Abbie's chemo nurse, Dominic). The only scenes that come close to working are Mbatha-Raw's with Walken, who imbues his character, Myron, another cancer sufferer, with humour, wisdom and dignity. She certainly has little to no chemistry with drippy Sam, whose sole character trait is that he wears odd socks.

Under normal circumstances, I could forgive a film with such a strong cast a great many sins, but Irreplaceable You – which is directed by Stephanie Laing, who has worked on TV show Veep – also contains plot holes you could spot from the International Space Station. If Abbie set up Sam with someone on Tinder, how would their relationship have worked exactly? Would his potential new beau have had to hang about on the sidelines for weeks or months, until Abbie kicked the bucket, or would she have started dating Sam while the supposed love of his life was slowly but surely dying? Screenwriter Bess Wohl never tells us because the intrusion of logic into her silly plot would have torpedoed the whole thing.

Worse still, Abbie is supposed to have terminal cancer, goes through extensive surgery and chemo, yet somehow looks every bit as bright and beautiful at the end as she does at the beginning. I'm guessing no one involved in the making of the film went anywhere near a cancer hospice to witness the stark reality of what dying of the disease actually involved. One thing's for sure, you don't much look like a glamorous Hollywood actress at the end.

Dead On Arrival: Mawkish dramedy could be 2018's worst

Finally, there's The Snowman (DVD, Blu-ray, and VOD) WW, a by-the-numbers Norway-set thriller based on a Jo Nesbø novel and directed by Tomas Alfredson (Let The Right One In). It's beautifully shot and Michael Fassbender is dependably grizzled as Harry Hole, an alcoholic detective on the trail of the titular serial killer. The film is only really remarkable, however, for the fact Alfredson admitted, post-release, it was incomplete and time constraints had meant he was unable to shoot "10-15 per cent of the screenplay". This means there are plot elements just left hanging and scenes which make no sense whatsoever. I notice the cheeky buggers are still charging full price for it though...

Missing in action: The Snowman is incomplete... and it shows

Film of the week: Happy Death Day

What I will be watching this week: The Greatest Showman seems to have turned into a full-blown cultural phenomenon, so it's time to see what I've been missing out on.

This week's top 10 UK DVDs/Blu-rays (movies only)
1. The Lego Ninjago Movie
2. Blade Runner 2049
3. Kingsman: The Golden Circle
4. My Little Pony: The Movie
5. The Mountain Between Us
6. Victoria And Abdul
7. Dunkirk
8. It (2017)
9. Loving Vincent
10. Fifty Shades Darker

The Ritual, Rock'n Roll, and When We First Met: Your Week In Film (February 12-18)

Into the woods: Death stalks Rafe Spall and friends in The Ritual 

The best and worst of this week's UK home entertainment releases on DVD, Blu-ray and digital. All the films mentioned are available to buy, rent and/or stream now, unless otherwise stated.

Ratings guide: WWWW - Wonderful  WWW - Worthwhile  WW - Watchable  W - Woeful

I could quite happily live the rest of my days without ever again seeing another film in which a group of friends gets lost in a spooky forest and is picked off one-by-one by an unseen monster. The Ritual (DVD and VOD) WW – based on Adam Nevill's novel of the same name – is yet another entry in that particular horror sub-genre, but is saved by some solid ideas and an impressive creature design.

Four blokey British friends, including Rafe Spall (The Big Short), go hiking in a remote area of Sweden to honour the memory of Rob (Paul Reid), a friend murdered during an attempted robbery at an off-licence. Spall's character Luke carries terrible guilt with him over the incident because he hid when Rob was being attacked. During their trek, one of the party injures his foot and the group is forced to take a shortcut through a forest to reach help. But it soon becomes clear they are not alone...

David Bruckner's film wears its influences on its sleeve a little too much (The Wicker Man, The Blair Witch Project, King Kong), but Luke's guilt – played out in a series of hallucinations – is effectively explored. However, the film only really sparks into life towards the end, when we finally see what has been stalking the group and learn something of its nature. This is a low-budget project, but the creature is well realised and genuinely nightmarish. The problem is, once it turned up, I lost interest in pretty much everything else. Never mind Spall and his cannon-fodder friends, I wanted to know more about the beast. In fact, as long as it didn't involve four more doofuses wandering around in the woods, I'd watch a prequel exploring The Ritual monster's origins in a heartbeat.

Take a hike: David Bruckner's film sees four pals suffer a holiday from hell

We should also call a moratorium on movies that rip off the premise to Groundhog Day. In the last year alone, we've had Netflix "comedy" Naked (awful), and teen horror Happy Death Day (rather better). When We First Met (Netflix) WW is a romantic comedy that, at first, sticks pretty closely to elements of Harold Ramis's 1993 classic but, thankfully, eventually finds its own voice.

Adam Devine is Noah, a business school dropout who now plays piano at a jazz bar (shades of La La Land). He meets Avery (Alexandra Daddario) at a Halloween party and falls for her immediately, only to see his object of desire meet and connect with dullard Ethan (Robbie Amell), before he can tell her how he feels. As luck would have it, a magical photo booth enables Noah to go back in time over and over again, as he attempts to inveigle his way into Avery's affections.

When We First Met only really engages when it starts taking serious liberties with the idea that the past can – or even should – be changed. In some ways, Ari Sandels' movie ends up as a riposte to the conclusions of Groundhog Day – fixating on one would-be love interest is unhealthy, weird, and could even be preventing you from meeting the person you're meant to be with. It's a nice twist and takes the film off in a direction I wasn't expecting, following a first half notable only for Devine's insufferable Jack Black-esque vocal inflections and facial contortions. The young actor was charming and funny in the first Pitch Perfect, but that seems like an awfully long time ago.

Picture imperfect: When We First Met has an originality problem

This year's My French Film Festival draws to a close on Monday (February 19), so you only have a few days left to check out the 13 features and 16 shorts on offer at the event's website (some of the films can also be found on Mubi and Curzon Home Cinema). My favourite of the movies I've seen so far is Rock'n Roll (VOD) WWW, an inventive and amusing satire on fame and ageing from veteran actor Guillaume Canet, who directs, writes and stars as a version of himself.

Although not particularly well known in the UK, Canet is a big star in France and, in his early 40s, has seemingly developed a reputation for playing safe roles in safe films. Worse still, his partner is Hollywood superstar Marion Cotillard (both here on screen and in real life), whose success in the likes of La Vie En Rose (for which she won a Best Actress Oscar) effortlessly eclipses his own. When Camilla Rowe, Canet's co-star in a new film in which he plays her father, tells him he's past it, the actor takes it very badly and sets out on an entirely ill-advised journey to prove he can still "rock".

Rock'n Roll could have been a self-indulgent disaster, a vanity project in which Canet (who you might recognise from films such as The Program and The Beach) can laugh at himself while secretly aggrandising his life and accomplishments. The thing is, though, it's all done with such gusto – and an unmistakeable sliver of honesty – that you get quickly caught up in every bizarre plot turn as Canet's behaviour quickly sends his career down the dumper. And just when proceedings start to slow, the film suddenly heads off in an even more audacious direction to deliver an ending every bit as absurd as it is satisfying.

Cotillard sends herself up a treat too (she's only interested in taking on roles that feature "a disability or an accent"), while the supporting cast (all playing themselves) reads like a who's who of current French cinema. Johnny Hallyday – dubbed the French Elvis – delivers a cameo, rendered bittersweet following the veteran rocker's death in early December.

She's Cott it all: Marion sends herself up in Rock'n Roll

Finally, there's Seeing Allred (Netflix) WW, a documentary portrait of Los Angeles-based civil rights lawyer, Gloria Allred. The no-nonsense 76-year-old is famous in the States for her tireless campaigning for women and the LGBTQ community, as well as trying to bring alleged celebrity sex offenders, such as Bill Cosby, to book. Roberta Grossman and Sophie Sartain's film offers a solid enough portrait for those of us unfamiliar with Allred's troubled life and glittering career, but I'm not sure her fans – of which there are many – will learn anything new (she keeps frustratingly schtum about her second marriage to convicted fraudster William Allred, which ended in ugly divorce proceedings). 

I've no doubt Allred is a thoroughly decent human being, who has helped a lot of vulnerable people and championed some fantastic causes, but this is little more than hagiography. It needed a couple of more critical voices to balance the constant cheerleading from the likes of Gloria Steinem. I realise many of her sternest detractors are misogynists and homophobes, but surely the filmmakers could have tracked down someone with an IQ above 20 to offer a slightly less gushing appraisal of her tactics and politics.

Red alert: Documentary only scratches the surface of its subject

Film of the week: Rock'n Roll

What I shall be watching this week: Richard Linklater's Last Flag Flying (a spiritual sequel to Hal Ashby's 1973 movie The Last Detail) was only in UK cinemas a couple of weeks ago, but has already landed on Amazon Prime Video.

This week's Top 10 Blu-rays and DVDs (movies only)

1. Blade Runner 2049

2. Kingsman: The Golden Circle

3. Victoria And Abdul

4. It (2017)

5. Dunkirk

6. Fifty Shades Darker

7. Despicable Me 3

8. Kingsman: The Secret Service/The Golden Circle

9. Flatliners

10. Batman: Gotham By Gaslight

Blade Runner 2049, The Cloverfield Paradox, and In Bed With Victoria: Your Week In Film (February 5-11)

Dead space: Daniel Bruhl and co face terrible danger in The Cloverfield Paradox

The best and worst of this week's UK home entertainment releases on DVD, Blu-ray and digital. All the films mentioned are available to buy, rent and/or stream now, unless otherwise stated. 

Ratings guide: WWWW - Wonderful  WWW - Worthwhile  WW - Watchable  W - Woeful

I will draw my final breath arguing that we really didn't need a sequel to Ridley's Scott's 1982 sci-fi classic, but Blade Runner 2049 (DVD, Blu-ray, and VOD) WW½ certainly has its moments, nearly all of them down to the movie's sublime cinematography and stunning visuals. The plot, on the other hand, is clumsy (soapy, almost), its pace sluggish, and I remain unconvinced yet another discourse on "what it means to be human", expressed through the experiences of an AI, robot or android, is entirely necessary. Cinema and other media have given us quite enough of them, thanks.

Set 30 years after the original movie, the assets of the bankrupt Tyrell corporation have been bought up by sinister uber-capitalist Niander Wallace (Jared Leto). He has begun the manufacture of a new batch of replicants to use as slave labour so humanity can continue its expansion off-world. He can't manufacture enough of them though, and needs to find a way for the artificial humans to procreate. Ryan Gosling is K, a replicant Blade Runner charged by the LAPD with "retiring" his own kind, specifically the older, rebellious models from the original film. As luck would have it, K discovers that a replicant child has been born and suspects it might even be him. This knowledge brings K into conflict with Wallace and his ruthless replicant henchwoman Luv (Sylvia Hoeks), leading him from LA out into the nuke-blighted wilderness of Las Vegas to track down the long-missing Deckard (Harrison Ford).

Denis Villeneuve's film takes an age to get going and only really puts its pedal to the metal in the final third, with the arrival of Ford, who is then inauspiciously sidelined as the story races to a violent climax. There's nothing here as iconic or thrilling as Deckard's fight with Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), although Ford and Gosling's punch-up in Vegas, while glitchy holograms of Elvis and Marilyn Monroe play in the background, comes close. There's a scene in which Deckard confronts a ghost from his past that should have been a classic but is undermined by unconvincing CG (it's like Rogue One's Peter Cushing faux pas all over again). Worse still, Wallace is a dull villain. He does very bad things but is difficult to hate because he's so lacking in character and complexity. The film has been accused of misogyny and, while you can partially excuse that because its set in a dystopia where women are treated poorly, it doesn't excuse one particularly grubby and exploitative scene in which Wallace kills a naked replicant female with a scalpel. Just plain nasty.

What considerably elevates Blade Runner 2049, and makes it worth nearly three hours of your time, is Roger Deakins' cinematography, which is, quite simply, a wonder to behold. There are some visual moments here that fair take the breath away, even on the small screen. Dingy, grungy and gloomy, 2049's LA matches anything you'll see in the original movie, while the orange-hued sequences set in Deckard's Las Vegas bolthole should be enough to win Deakins a first Oscar (after 14 nominations) all on their own.

Cutting edge: Blade Runner 2049 boasts jaw-dropping visuals

You have to admire Netflix's marketing chutzpah. The third Cloverfield movie – supposedly titled The God Particle and acquired by the streaming service from Paramount last year – has been speculated about for months and then up they pop to announce, during Sunday's Super Bowl, that the film – now called The Cloverfield Paradox WW – will be available right after the game. It's a bold and clever strategy that makes the film's release rather more of an event than it would have been under normal circumstances. If the following morning's Cloverfield-related chatter on Twitter and elsewhere was any indication, it certainly did the trick.

The movie itself is an enjoyably hokey slice of sci-fi that channels the likes of Alien, Event Horizon, Another Earth, and Gravity, but is, in reality, probably no more remarkable than a half-decent episode of The Twilight Zone or Outer Limits. There's a bit of body horror, scientific gobbledegook by the pound, the odd splash of dark humour, plus lots of charging about down corridors, nick-of-time equipment repairs, and explosions.

Gugu Mbatha-Raw is Ava Hamilton, the British member of a space mission to test and supposedly perfect a particle accelerator to solve the planet's energy crisis, a process so dangerous it can't take place on Earth. Suffice to say, the attempt goes awry and the crew (which also includes Chris O'Dowd, Daniel Bruhl, and David Oyelowo), as well as their space station, are hurled into another dimension, with disastrous, reality-bending consequences.

Julius Onah's film contains some interesting ideas and genuinely memorable moments ("What are you talking about, Arm?"), and I especially liked the way its events connect to 2008's first and comfortably best Cloverfield movie. Mbatha-Raw (Belle, Miss Sloane) is a terrific young actress and, in truth, deserves meatier roles than this. But the fact a black British woman is playing the lead in a JJ Abrams franchise (a fourth film in the series is promised later in the year) should not just be acknowledged, but celebrated.

Raw deal: British star Gugu gets lost in space in The Cloverfield Paradox

My French Film Festival is still going strong and I'm slowly working my way through the 30 films and shorts on offer. In Bed With Victoria (VOD) WW is a rom-com of sorts about a thirty-something lawyer (Elle's Virginie Efira is the titular character) struggling under the weight of her chaotic life. She has a demanding career, two energetic young daughters to look after, and unfortunate penchants for popping pills and disastrous romantic entanglements. Matters only become more strained when she is asked to defend an old friend on an attempted murder charge, and she takes legal action against her former husband to prevent him from revealing scandalous secrets in a blog. The humour is silly rather than funny, the plot ridiculous and clunky (important courtroom reveals centre on a monkey and a dog). However, Justine Triet's film is saved by Efira, a charismatic and beguiling screen presence, as well as Victoria's slow-building romance with drug-dealer-turned-intern, Samuel (Vincent Lacoste). 

Queen Vic: Virginie Efira is beguiling and charismatic

Film of the week: Blade Runner 2049, but you should also see Beach Rats, which is out on DVD this week. I wrote about it here a few months ago.

What I'll be watching this week: It's time to revisit the late Jonathan Demme's Something Wild, which has just been released in the UK by Criterion.

If you are so inclined, check out my review of Jupiter's Moon at Film Inquiry.

Top 10 UK DVDs/Blu-rays (movies only)
1. Kingsman: The Golden Circle
2. Victoria And Abdul
3. It (2017)
4. Kingsman: The Secret Service/The Golden Circle
5. Dunkirk
6. Fifty Shades Darker
7. La La Land
8. Paddington
9. God's Own Country
10. Sing

Hounds Of Love, God's Own Country, and Willy The 1st: Your Week In Film (January 29-February 4)

God only knows: Francis Lee's debut was one of last year's best LGBTQ films

The best and worst of the week's UK home entertainment releases on DVD, Blu-ray and digital. All the films mentioned are available to buy, rent and/or stream now, unless otherwise stated. In a bid to catch up a bit after taking an extended New Year break, this is my second column of the week...

Ratings guide:  WWWW - Wonderful  WWW - Worthwhile  WW - Watchable  W - Woeful

Hounds Of Love (DVD, Blu-ray, and VOD) WWW is a brutal but deceptively clever horror film from Australia, seemingly based on the harrowing true-crime tale of David and Catherine Birnie, the Perth couple who abducted and murdered four young girls over a five-week period in 1986.

Writer/director Ben Young introduces us to Vicki (Ashleigh Cummings), a headstrong teenage girl feeling low after her parents' divorce. Following a row with her mum, she heads off into the night in search of a party, but is tricked into accompanying a couple – Evelyn (Emma Booth) and John (Stephen Curry) – back to their home, where they attack and imprison her. Vicki notices friction between the pair and realises her only chance of getting out alive is to try and drive a wedge between them.

The unusual thing about Hounds Of Love is its lack of explicitness. We see little to nothing of what goes on behind the door of the room in which poor Vicki is kept chained to a bed. One especially clueless review described the film as "torture porn", but that description could not be further from the truth. Somehow, the not-seeing makes it worse because the abuse and violence Vicki clearly suffers is left to your imagination, and that rarely goes well.

Young's next strongest suit is Vicki herself, effectively essayed by Cummings as a brave and resilient survivor. She's no meek and mild victim, waiting around to be rescued or killed. Even amidst her suffering, she's thinking and plotting, and quickly identifies a chink in Evelyn and John's armour. The couple's relationship is a trainwreck. Evelyn's needy, easily-manipulated and jealous, but not totally lost to the darkness, while bully John is shown to be a weak and inadequate man, picked on by bigger, stronger males in his neighbourhood. The fragility of their bond is the pair's Achilles heel and Vicki prods and pokes at it.

This is the director's first feature, after a good few years making shorts and episodes of TV shows, and he brings all that experience to bear. Young's adept at creating tension, to the point where you feel unsettled and decidedly queasy (I won't listen to Nights In White Satin in quite the same way again, that's for sure). He and cinematographer Michael McDermot even manage to make Evelyn and John's nondescript suburban home into something sinister, emphasising every cramped, claustrophobic nook and cranny, while contrasting its dark secrets with the wide, bright and open street on which they live.

Barking mad: Hounds Of Love is a brutal Aussie horror

Now in its 8th year, My French Film Festival is back with another big batch of brand new cinematic treats from across the Channel, which you can stream either on its website, or via Mubi and Curzon Home Cinema. I'll be talking about several more of the films in the coming weeks (the festival runs until February 19), but let's start off with Willy The 1st WWW, which is remarkable for several reasons, chief among them the fact it has four directors – Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma, Marielle Gautier, and Hugo P. Thomas.

This quartet of young filmmakers – who also share a writing credit – serve up something rather unusual and intriguing with this, their debut feature. The excellent Daniel Vannet – another newcomer – plays twin brothers: Willy and Michel Pruvost. Middle-aged, and mentally and emotionally fragile, the pair live out a dull existence with their mum and dad in rural Normandy, whilst dreaming of a move to the nearest town, Caudebec, which, to them, seems impossibly glamorous. We quickly realise Michel is desperately unhappy and it is no surprise when he commits suicide, leaving Willy bereft and lonely. He relocates anyway but finds the transition extremely difficult, his only friend a flamboyant gay man – also called Willy (Romain Léger) – who is mocked by small-minded locals and dreams of moving to Germany.

Willy The 1st is a fascinating film that isn't easy to categorise. On the one hand, it's a plaintive slice of social realism, on the other it contains some brilliantly bleak humour and even contains supernatural moments (Willy is visited by Michel's ghost throughout the film). Such a chimeric creation shouldn't work but it really does, helped by a strong script, fine performances and the quartet's refusal to make Willy some kind of "loveable simpleton". He's a stubborn, difficult man and there are a couple of scenes here in which he isn't remotely sympathetic. Such is the strength of Vannet's characterisation, though, you cheer on his quest for independence and happiness regardless.

Twin peak: Willy wants a fresh start and a better life

Last year was a monumental one for LGBTQ cinema with a Best Picture Oscar for Moonlight, Call Me By Your Name being garlanded in critical acclaim, and the likes of Beach Rats, Princess Cyd, Thelma, and BPM (Beats Per Minute) also receiving plenty of love. British cinema kept its end up with God's Own Country (DVD, Blu-ray, and VOD) WWW½, writer/director Francis Lee's gritty, passionate love story set in the wilds of rural Yorkshire.

Josh O'Connor plays Johnny, a bitter and frustrated young man lumbered with running the family farm, when his father (Ian Hart) falls ill. To help Johnny cope with the demands of spring lambing season Gheorghe (Alec Secareanu), a Romanian migrant, is hired on a short-term contract. After initial friction, mistrust, and a fair bit of racism on Johnny's part, the pair grow closer and begin a relationship.

There's more mud, sex and beautifully-photographed scenery here than you can shake a stick at, but it's the growing tenderness between the two men that is the real star, as well as the unexpected directions in which Lee takes the plot. Not that films with gay themes should have to compete against each other, but comparisons with Call Me By Your Name are inevitable. For me, God's Own Country is the better of the two, mainly because its two leads are far more sympathetic and interesting, and their relationship has a crackle of electricity lacking in Luca Guadagnino's languorous Oscar contender. It's a very fine piece of work, with a perfect ending guaranteed to bring a tear to your eye and a wobble to your lip.

Country strife: Johnny and Gheorghe's relationship hits a few bumps

Film of the week: In Between (see previous column), but you should definitely see God's Own Country too.