God's Own Country

The rugged beauty of the County of Yorkshire in the North of England and slimy afterbirths give the gay drama God’s Own Country character.

A rough but stunning landscape, sheep, two young men who feel painfully alone until they can no longer contain their desire for one another: who wouldn’t be reminded of Brokeback Mountain by Ang Lee, and Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger kissing passionately? Director Francis Lee, an English TV and theatre actor, sometimes even seems to encourage the comparison. Don’t be deceived. His film debut God’s Own Country has its own character and its own setting.

Lee, who was himself born on a farm in Yorkshire, tells the story of Johnny (Josh O’Connor), who seems to have resigned himself to a brutal, lonely, and monotonous existence. Every morning, he vomits out the litres of beer that he drank out of frustration the night before. He then drudges around the failing sheep farm owned by his invalid father (Ian Hart), who does nothing but bark orders at him, and makes no effort whatsoever to hide his aversion to his son. The grandmother (Gemma Jones) is, if anything, even stricter. Intimacy is limited to rough sex with anonymous boys.

Initially, Johnny is not interested in Gheorghe (Alec Secareanu), the tender Romanian who is employed to help him during lambing season and who does know what he’s doing. But blood will tell, and after a first, almost bestial sexual encounter, tender feelings begin to develop. The closed, taciturn Johnny begins to bloom, to his own surprise as much as anyone else’s.

The English press is wildly enthusiastic about this film debut, but only because they seem to forget that the supporting characters have little depth and that the plot is hardly original; at some points it even seems like a hackneyed cliché. The second half of God’s Own Country begins to falter, lacking both power and originality. The first half is definitely above average, especially thanks to the rugged beauty of the northern English county and shots that are reminiscent of the intense, poetic naturalism of Andrea Arnold (Wuthering Heights). Lee rightly has an eye for spit, slime, blood, and sperm. An afterbirth is no less part of the world than beautiful meadow flowers.