God’s Own Country is a quiet, hopeful love letter to queerness
Writer/director Francis Lee’s debut feature is just about as confident as they come. He crafts a genuinely enrapturing depiction of love, one which stems from the assurance that compassion breeds compassion; and in presenting it so deftly, he reminds us that gayness itself need not always be the primary struggle in gay media. Lee isn’t bothered with framing his characters’ sexuality as something painful enough to garner straight sympathy, nor does he try to cut deep with a tragic ending — both of which make this something found relatively few and far between in the space it occupies. Having grown up mere minutes from the land on which he filmed, Lee gives an authentically rough and textural look into farm life; one with a camera that isn’t afraid to linger on the normalcy of birth and death therein. It’s a film grounded in the hills and lives of Yorkshire, from the warm grain speckling its picture to the reliance on wind and white noise in lieu of a traditional score. God’s Own Country is in love with capturing a very specific place just as much as the relationship that builds within it.
After a rough encounter the night before while out lambing, migrant Romanian farmhand Gheorghe (Alec Secareanu) enters the stone lodging shared with the farm owner’s son Johnny (Josh O’Connor), and notices that he’s still awake. In the minutes that follow, we witness some of the most lovingly choreographed intimacy I’ve seen in a film. Johnny lives through a stubborn contentment with grueling work giving way to nights of chaste, anonymous sex and drinking; and the additional duties thrust upon him in the wake of his father’s stroke leave him with even less time or energy for much else. Gheorghe is quick to notice his unease with affection, and backs off to show through careful motions that it’s alright to slow down — that it’s okay to feel. As the camera dipped in and out of focus, I came to realize I’d been holding my breath, as if not wanting to intrude on them. Lacking any sound but their own, it’s a scene enamored simply with two bodies, and the way they move.
In the aftermath of his father’s worsening condition, Johnny is forced to realize that sooner rather than later, he’ll have to take over the farm. With the possibility of having Gheorghe stay on for longer (or even indefinitely), however, the shift that he’d been mentally barricading himself off from begins to appear far less bleak. After returning from the hospital, the two of them are afforded much more time together in the evenings with the house to themselves, and a quiet domesticity forms. On the first night, Gheorghe cooks pasta for the two of them. Johnny, as usual, quickly shoves some into his mouth, but Gheorghe stops him to take a piece off of his plate and taste it. He shakes his head, adding salt before stirring it and letting him continue. The film’s depictions of everyday life for these men — bolstered by its penchant for cutting in close on faces and hands — add far more than a larger focus on dialogue would’ve in their place. The love for human tactility here is incredibly wholesome, and to full, nuanced effect, it embraces the potential of its medium to show far more than it spells out.
Crucially, this isn’t the story of a foreigner whisking the protagonist away and showing him there’s something better out there. Gheorghe’s presence helps Johnny, perhaps for the first time in his life, take time to notice the beauty and things worth sticking around for right where he is. Johnny’s main conflict isn’t with being gay, it’s with the unknown vulnerability of intimacy at all, and forcing himself to lower the walls that years of keeping his head down and simply existing built up; it’s a struggle that I felt a strong connection to. While many have praised O’Connor’s performance — and I would be among them — Secareanu deserves recognition for how much warmth he brought to the windswept, passive-aggressive existence the family leads. His sturdy, gentle demeanor is such a contrast to Johnny’s utilitarian interaction with the world that Saxby gradually conceding to let him in as more than a nameless sexual partner is, from its first frame to its last, wonderfully captivating to watch.
In its final minutes, as Patrick Wolf’s broodingly optimistic The Days blared and the screen cut to black, I could do little other than bury my head in my hands and cry. Lee’s debut is anchored by such raw, forward performances that even if it retreads familiar ground for romance films, it feels like something fresh, and something needed. This isn’t a forbidden love story, or a tunnel-visioned look at the pain of coming to terms with one’s sexuality; and it’s certainly more than just the UK’s Brokeback Mountain. It weaves subversive generational acceptance and a pro-immigrant message into one of the most genuinely comforting films I’ve ever seen, and it’s one I’ll be coming back to and thinking about for a long, long time.
