This progressively darkening Liverpool love story centres on scenes of sadomasochistic sex. Its 90 minutes divide neatly after 45, when Kelly (Antonia Campbell-Hughes) wrecks her relationship with Victor (Julian Morris) by carving his back with broken glass. But Kieran Evans’ feature debut is mostly gentler and sadder than that.
The violence Kelly brings into the bedroom after she meets Victor at a club intensifies sex as a place of dangerous refuge from the outside world’s storms. When Kelly goes to her erratic mum’s for tea, she finds her violent ex-boyfriend there too; Victor’s happy-go-lucky mates become nastier as they dabble in drug-dealing. This tentative, sensitive working-class couple yearn for something better.
Evans’ uncensorious depiction of drugs and "deviant" desires in an otherwise sweet relationship between thoughtful young people is one of his film’s small triumphs. The brief sex scenes are strong, but no more interesting than a first real date in Sefton Park, followed by intimate discussions about art in Liverpool’s traditional, great Walker Gallery. It’s a pleasant change for a young cinema couple to be given space to share ideals and intellects, instead of swapping romantic clichés between snogs. Victor does declare he’d do anything for Kelly. But so does her violent ex-.
Finisterre, the Saint Etienne-scored reverie on London landscapes co-directed by Paul Kelly, was an early Evans documentary success. Here Victor finds the wider, higher Britain he aches for in the psychedelically vivid green leaves and shadows of Sefton Park and rural Wales, where he discovers restful solitude. Such lyrical moments contrast with the urban darkness which falls in Kelly + Victor’s second half. But its heroes don’t stop reaching for the richer existence they grasp most immediately in each other’s arms, till their forgivable flaws bring such hopes crashing down. In its doomed bridging of divides, Kelly + Victor becomes a Romeo and Juliet for sadomasochistic, kindly clubbers.
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