Finally watching "God's Own Country" and Netflix, I'm not sure what you were smoking when you described Johnny and Gheorghe's relationship as a "torrid affair"? It's about as sweet a romance as you could possibly find. I've developed cavities (AND AM NOT SORRY).
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Pitch: A serial in which we watch gay and lesbian, and other queer relationships, form during lambing season while wandering around Yorkshire delivering baby sheeps and kissing.
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I dunno, this movie is trying to inject drama with a dying parent and c'mon, we just want Johnny and Gheorghe to be happy together. 🍿
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I also appreciate that this is not teenagers-fall-in-love movie. I am one thousand percent for queer teenager cinema, but happy grown up queer people cinema is also very, very good.
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Other things I really liked:
1. Queer people in the country, meeting and staying in the country. While they didn't gloss over isolation as a struggle the solution wasn't moving to London.
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2. They captured how couples (any lovers, in any combination, really!) touch each other not just as seduction or during sex but like, checking in, or comforting, or just because it's nice to physically connect.
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3. I liked that neither of the main characters seemed to have some sort of deep struggle over being gay. It was a factor for them both, and Johnny clearly was worried about his dad's reaction, but that wasn't really the focus.
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What I mean is, it was a falling-in-love story, not a coming out narrative, and I appreciated that.
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4. The film is also doing so really fascinating things with how sex scenes in cinema communicate pleasure and relational intimacy to the audience. It's breaking a lot of both Hollywood conventions & what we all "know" how sex and (esp. male) desire operates in movies.
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Ooh, glad to hear this. It keeps coming up in my recs but I wasn’t sure about it. Will take a look now.
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I was wary too. I've seen too much gay pain presented as great art. But this one felt like a good romance novel.
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