Peter Bradshaw 

brilliantlove – review

The premise of this sexually explicit debut might be a bit implausible, but there's no faulting the performances, writes Peter Bradshaw
  
  

brilliantlove
Absolute commitment … brilliantlove Photograph: PR

There are some unrealities and implausibilities in this sexually explicit film from first-time feature director Ashley Horner, yet it's made interesting by the physically and emotionally exhibitionistic, on- and, in fact, over-the-edge performances by Nancy Trotter Landry and Liam Browne. They are Noon, a would-be taxidermist madly in love with Manchester, a photography student who lives in a terrible lock-up garage where the couple have steamy penetrative sex 24 hours out of 24. Manchester is into photographing Noon while they're having sex, and the pictures fall into the hands of a somewhat unlikely porn baron who's looking to move into some sort of sub-Saatchi, upmarket-museum-quality erotica. He persuades Manchester to let him take over his career, and Manchester's interest in Noon's body becomes ever more manipulative and obsessive; he shows himself to be much more sexually up himself than his increasingly alienated partner. It's not entirely believable and yet Landry and Browne show an absolute, full-on commitment. Even though it's flawed, it's also strangely heartfelt.

• This article was amended on 12 and 29 November 2010. The original referred to the couple as Leah, played by Arabella Arnott, and Manchester. This has been corrected.

 

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