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United Kingdom · 2019
Rated R · 1h 32m
Director Lisa Barros D'Sa, Glenn Leyburn
Starring Liam Neeson, Lesley Manville, David Wilmot
Genre Drama, Romance
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This honest celebration of love and a relationship between a husband and wife chronicles the lives of Joan and Tom, a delightfully average couple. But when Joan is diagnosed with breast cancer, the course of her treatment shines a light on their enduring devotion to each other.
Ultimately, Ordinary Love is a celebration not just of this functional, delightfully average relationship, but also of life itself, risking and wrestling with loss not in spite of the fact it’s shared with others, but precisely because of that fact.
David Holmes and Brian Irvine’s score is melodic and insistent, and it knows when to fall away into silence to let the audience appreciate Neeson and Manville’s superb chemistry.
Anchored by great performances from Liam Neeson and especially Lesley Manville, Ordinary Love is alive to the feelings and moments other hospital dramas overlook. Its accumulation of details form a shattering whole.
Wall Street Journal by Joe Morgenstern
The film’s strength lies in the performances — two fine actors elevating their roles from the touchingly mundane to the suddenly momentous.
The Hollywood Reporter by Leslie Felperin
As quiet and thoughtfully composed as a Dutch master's painting, Ordinary Love uses clean lines and well observed tiny details to build up a deeply moving, nuanced portrait of a marriage under strain after a cancer diagnosis.
The Observer (UK) by Mark Kermode
Directed with wit, subtlety and great emotional honesty by Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn (the co-directors of 2012’s brilliantly life-affirming Good Vibrations), it’s a singular story with universal appeal – striking a very personal chord with some viewers while finding common ground with the widest possible audience.
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
There are, arguably, scenes in this film which are less than subtle – and there were times when I wanted something more indirect. But Manville and Neeson have a real empathy and intimacy on screen.
Ignore the unassuming title: Ordinary Love is a love story that is extraordinary.
The A.V. Club by Vikram Murthi
Despite their best efforts, Liam Neeson and Lesley Manville can’t rescue Ordinary Love, a bland drama about a late-middle-aged couple grappling with a cancer diagnosis.
An achingly intimate portrait of a marriage weathering a storm ... what shines is the combination of Owen McCafferty’s stingingly honest screenplay and the two lovely, emotionally textured central performances.
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