Love in a cold climate
NOBODY HAS TO KNOW 12A ★★★★
Are we falling back in love with the romantic weepie? This autumn, we’ve wallowed in the unrequited love story of Past Lives and shredded hankies over Sir Michael Caine and Glenda Jackson’s devoted couple in The Great Escaper.
Now, we have this slow-burner about regret, loneliness and making up for lost time from writer/director Bouli Lanners.
With the Isle of Lewis providing the beautifully desolate backdrop, there’s a palpable sense of longing in every frame.
Lanners and Game Of Thrones actress Michelle Fairley play Phil and Millie, an unlikely couple who find love in even more unlikely circumstances.
Phil is a burly, big-hearted Belgian farmhand in his fifties whose reasons for moving to the Outer Hebrides aren’t immediately clear.
One Sunday, as the faithful are chatting after their weekly sermon, word arrives that Phil has suffered a stroke.
As Phil’s boss Angus ( Julian Glover) expresses his concern, Angus’s middle-aged daughter Millie is visibly devastated.
Although born and raised on the island, she’s an outsider too. Her aloof manner has earned the unmarried estate agent a cruel nickname – The Ice Queen. But fiery passions rage beneath that frosty exterior.
The Belgian returns to the community physically unharmed but suffering from temporary amnesia.
“I am your friend,” Millie tells him, when she arrives at his cottage to drive him to work at her father’s farm. This probably counts as a white lie.
Then, after discovering photographs of herself on Phil’s phone, she tells another untruth. And this one is definitely darker. “We were lovers,” she claims. Phil is surprised but more than happy to submit to his own secret passion.
But how will he feel when his memory returns? That question gives the plot its ticking clock.
Its power lies in fizzing chemistry and two wonderfully understated performances.
How will Phil feel when his memory returns? This gives the plot a ticking clock