A stunning love story where loneliness is as important as lust

The World to Come

Cert 15, 105mins

★★★★✩

IN THIS visceral period romance, farmer’s wife Abigail (Katherine Waterston) knuckles down to her chores in a verdant, unpredictable nook of New York state, but can’t escape thoughts of her dead young daughter. Hope arrives in the form of neighbour Tallie (Vanessa Kirby, inset), who elbows aside her own controlling husband Finney (Christopher Abbott) to spend time with Abigail, and all heaven breaks loose.

Norwegian director Mona Fastvold

lets ecstasy seep in. The fleeting “sex” scenes only appear at the very end and, as in a number of recent same-sex love stories, loneliness is as much a theme as lust. If the dialogue is sometimes a tad writerly, Waterston and Kirby are a gorgeous match, lending a droll spin to the smallest scenes and never over-egging their tenderness towards one another.

Abigail’s needily morose husband, Dyer (Casey Affleck), soon recognises the women are more than just friends.

He tries guilt-tripping his wife; Finney takes a different approach.

The Gothic thrills are subtle and gut-churning. Tallie, dancing with Finney, moves like a ruined rag doll — the equal and opposite of a jubilant moment when, loved-up, she picks apples from a tree. With Fastvold’s camera under the branches, both fruit and picker seem on the verge of being catapulted into the sky.

⬤ In cinemas