When the EU enshrined in its treaties the aim of an “ever closer union among the peoples of Europe”, it may not have been thinking of the kind that occurs between a young Yorkshire farmer and a Romanian labourer in God’s Own Country. In the crepuscular light of Brexit, however, the film resembles a symbolic appeal for tenderness at a time of instability, even if it is really something altogether more conventional: a love story against the odds.
John (Josh O’Connor) is a gangly, gawky slab of a lad with a face that’s all nose and ears, and a disposition that makes Heathcliff seem sunny. He lives and works on the farm owned by his father (Ian Hart), who has suffered a stroke, and his grandmother (Gemma Jones), who casts a concerned eye over the boy’s lifestyle, which amounts to little more than drink, puke, repeat. John isn’t exactly struggling with his sexuality. He’s perfectly brazen about having his way with a pretty male auctioneer he meets while flogging a prize cow; the dating scene is routinely described as a meat market, but here it’s an actual meat market.
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