
Its first feet are in the school of miserablist realism, and while director Lee never abandons his things-as-they-are approach, he tells a love story by letting magic in at unusual angles. “God’s Own Country” is a tricky movie, but not in a way that’s dishonest.
He not only starts smiling more, he actually gets better-looking. The animals start to thrive (or at least do better) under Gheorghe’s tender, knowing ministrations, and Johnny himself opens up. An unusual kind of Eden conjures itself up. Once they’ve made love in the mud, they begin to bond. Once Gheorghe and Johnny get to work at an area of the farm far removed from the main house, their seeming hostility to each other gives way to something else. All of which annoys both Johnny and Martin no end at first. Gheorghe is handsome, confident, friendly. Johnny’s world is shaken up a bit when Gheorghe, a Romanian immigrant with extensive experience and competence in tasks Johnny seems entirely indifferent to, arrives to temp at the farm. He’s gay, which one infers does not go down well either with his immediate family or the extremely lumpen residents of the tiny town where Johnny goes for his drink.

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If you are made squeamish by Explicit Calving Action, and the aftermath thereof, this might not be a movie for you.Īside from carrying the weight of the farm on his shoulders-which he does poorly-Johnny has another issue. This leaves Johnny to look after the livestock, and the looking after of the livestock is portrayed in vivid detail. Father Martin is in fact disabled, hobbled after a stroke. When I say small farming family, I mean it: he is the only son of Deidre and Martin, two older folks who look as if rural existence has beaten the life out of them. Johnny is the scion of a small farming family in Britain’s Pennine Mountains, a Northern region of England.
