I’ve never seen a film like it: Ordinary Love reviewed

Ordinary Love stars Lesley Manville and Liam Neeson as a long-married couple whose lives are disrupted when she is diagnosed with breast cancer. Not very Christmassy, you might think, but it’s not a ‘cancer story’, as has been said in some quarters, it’s a love story, told profoundly and beautifully and honestly rather than cloyingly or sentimentally. Chances are, it may even stay with you longer than any Richard Curtis film. I can’t guarantee it, but am quietly confident this will be so.

The screenplay is by the Northern Irish playwright Owen McCafferty whose own wife, Peggy, underwent breast cancer treatment, and the film is directed by Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn. Set in Belfast, it takes us from one Christmas to the next, with Manville playing Joan and Neeson playing Tom and first things first: how often do you see middle-aged love stories on screen? Almost never, so in its way this is quite radical.