brilliantlove

Arch by name, arch by nature, kooky free spirits Noon (Nancy Trotter Landry) and Manchester (Liam Browne) live in a lock-up garage somewhere in the north-east and do little else other than fuck – a lot – and indulge their pleasures: she likes taxidermy (little birds, mainly), he likes taking pictures of his nude girlfriend. It takes some time to warm to the free-and-easy tone of Ashley Horner’s steamy second feature which nods to ‘Nine Songs’ in its normalising approach to sex, but it hits a pleasing, allegorical groove when a rogue art dealer (Michael Hodgson) takes interest in Manchester’s pictures, making this less of a bedroom spin on ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ and more a hipster riff on the story of Adam and Eve, with ideas about the public and private, erotic art and pure and impure love. Let’s not get carried away: a lot of the film consists of little more than sweaty, if convincing, bonking, and Horner’s indulgence of Noon and Manchester’s blessed idiots act verges on the tiresome. But there’s an attractive, raw intensity to ‘brilliantlove’ that’s undeniable.