Kelly + Victor (Kieran Evans, 2012) - 4 stars

A character piece in the greatest sense of the term, Kelly + Victor is a work of art that depicts the title characters’ sexual relationship and its effects on their otherwise downward spiraling lives. This is writer/director Kieran Evans’ debut feature and has unsurprisingly been nominated for a BAFTA award.

Led by two stunning performances by Antonia Campbell-Hughes and Julian Morris, the film starts with their meeting on a cocaine-fuelled night out in a Liverpool nightclub. We then see their interactions over the next few weeks, as they are brought together by sex, addiction and tragedy.

Both title characters are hugely flawed people, both in troubling circumstances, yet they find such physical attraction in each other, which temporarily dulls the noise of misfortune for each of them.  What is interesting about Kelly and Victor’s relationship, and what keeps the film away from being just another love story about troubled souls is that the film is realistic in not suggesting that their relationship will necessarily be enough to simply whisk them away from all their troubles and allow them to start again happily. There is not an answer at the end of the film to whether the experiences in the film will lead them to leave their current lifestyles or change their ways (Kelly is haunted by an ex-boyfriend recently released from prison and falls in with a friend who is a sex worker, while Victor struggles to keep his friendships intact as his friends decide to go from taking cocaine to selling it.) This is one of the reasons that Kelly + Victor is great. The decision to not allow the characters to easily slip into an answer and resolution is a stroke of genius. What emphasises this realism is the performances by the two leads. The sparse use of dialogue aids this transition from film drama to real moments captured on camera.

Addiction plays a huge part in this story, which could perhaps be part of their attraction to each other. One is a regular cocaine user, while the other enjoys asphyxiation, and both introduce and draw the other into their own addiction, thus creating a sort of addiction to each other. Both addictions are to do with seeking for a release from the norm, an experience of ecstasy, which comes with a fair amount of danger, echoing both characters’ needs for something new, to get out of their mundane day-by-day Liverpool existences.

The film is also technically brilliant. The cinematography is beautiful, both in its static wide frames that show off a certain side of Liverpool so well, and its use of hand held close ups for dramatic scenes, while the often surreal sound design and use of soundtrack and a haunting score create such a tight feel to the film.

Kelly + Victor is a great piece of cinema from a very exciting new director, which toys with attraction and addiction in a new and unrelentingly real light.

(Review disc courtesy of Verve Pictures.)