TROUBLE AND STRIFE
ORDINARY LOVE I A solid marriage is tested in Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn’s cancer drama…
We last heard from Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn in 2013 with Good Vibrations, a joyous portrait of ’70s Northern Irish music promoter Terri Hooley. Still rooted in Ireland, their follow-up might come as a surprise, being the devastating story of a middle-aged woman, Joan (Lesley Manville), whose breast cancer diagnosis puts strain on her long marriage to the taciturn Tom (Liam Neeson).
It’s a small, meticulously observed film, with two heavyweights generating a special, close chemistry. It’s perhaps not surprising to hear that Ordinary Love is a story from the heart, based on writer Owen McCafferty’s experiences when his wife Peggy was diagnosed - a story initally too raw for him to write.
“Owen resisted, several times,” says Leyburn. “Which is understandable; he didn’t necessarily want to enter back into that world, and he certainly didn’t want to drag Peggy back with him. But in the end, it was Peggy who said, ‘It’s a good idea, we’re going ahead with it.’”
D’Sa and Leyburn were involved from those embryonic stages, and helped shepherd McCafferty’s script to the screen. “We loved the project because we could see right away that it wasn’t just a story about cancer,” says D’Sa. “It was a really strong, powerful
and unusual love story… We don’t tend to see love stories about longterm marriages. This is a couple who aren’t bored of each other. It’s about the poetry of everyday moments.”
On the surface it seems the polar opposite to Good Vibrations, however that, too, was a film about carrying on regardless. “What we love about both films,” says D’Sa, “is that while they deal with the darker, tougher realities of life, they also talk about the warmth and humanity we all bring, as human beings, to confront them – whether it’s a story about the troubles or cancer. We don’t ignore the tougher or darker themes but we do try to acknowledge the ways that people find to move through the world and find joy within it.”