Exceptionally, out on a Sunday evening last night (13th March) to the Riverside in Woodbridge to see a screening of Kelly + Victor, followed by a Q&A with the film’s director Kieran Evans. These “Riverside nights” have been put together and curated by Neil McGlone, who is friend and was a work colleague of Denise’s, but who is also a local film advisor and researcher. A nice innovation, I hope they’re a success.
The film is wonderfully shot and is well constructed, although the underpinning subject of a destructive sado-masochistic relationship might not be to everyone’s taste! For my part, quite an involving experience but it didn’t make any emotional connection with me, which might have everything to do with me rather than the film. Plenty of intensity but a little lacking in plausibility but, then again, maybe the characters had sides to them that were just too difficult to understand – there were hints of back story but in the end you just drew your own conclusions. In addition to the film being visually excellent, the central performances were also very fine. The Q&A afterwards was excellent, and it helped that the director was extremely candid about his experiences in the industry and the somewhat dubious impact of winning the Bafta best newcomer award for the film. An eye opener for those of us with little or no insider knowledge of the film industry. A great shame there were only about 30 of us there to see it.