Last at the Festival with 2017’s rural noir Dark River, a selection in the Pla
Last at the Festival with 2017’s rural noir Dark River, a selection in the Platform programme, writer-director Clio Barnard returns to the Bradford, West Yorkshire setting of her earlier films for this tumultuous, fiercely affecting midlife love story. A bundle of good humour and nervous energy, Ali (Adeel Akhtar) is a British Pakistani working-class landlord who forges close bonds with his tenants. One day, while picking up one of his tenants’ children from school, he offers a lift to Ava (Claire Rushbrook), an Irish-born teacher and single mother of five. They bond almost instantly through their love of music, though Ali favours the high energy of Buzzcocks and hip-hop while Ava takes refuge in the quieter comforts of Bob Dylan and Karen Dalton. Despite their divergent backgrounds, differences in their stages of life, and the colour of their skin, despite the fact of Ali’s failing marriage and Ava’s fraught relationship with her adult and adolescent children, each finds themself irresistibly drawn to the other. But can their mutual desire transcend a barrage of personal obstacles? Inspired by people Barnard encountered while making her acclaimed features The Arbor and The Selfish Giant, Ali & Ava is a film that feels profoundly rooted in lived experience, blending a tender emotional complexity with an at times bracing depiction of trauma and grief. Akhtar and Rushbrook’s finely hued performances speak to the setting’s cultural diversity and tribal loyalties while yielding a vulnerability that’s alternately heart-wrenching and joyous. Their story serves as a reminder that it is sometimes the least likely connections that are the ones most worth pursuing.
主演:黄秋生,卫诗雅,林家栋,麦子乐,吴俐璇,陈佩思,舩木壱辉,魏幽兰,苏伟曜,赵文俊,李耀曙,叶清方,蔡宝珠,蔡炜祥,李育萳,黄千恩,张欣怡,陈怡茵,罗敏儿,麦贵源,张宝权,陈鸿,林正中,吴润玲,林莅敏,官政全,林嘉仪,亨齐·安达拉斯,黄伟雄,李丽芬,Muhamad Muzaffar bin Mad.Noor,Samsuri Shahrom,蔡俐珉,林廷优,叶君雯,李伟耀,黄伊斐,黄章权,陈政荣,吴有财,周姝颐,邓耀文,赵家福,孙福财,林佳佳,郑进勇,江金汉,林豪胜,叶俊晖,唐福强,倪钿棓,陈彦如,萧百盈,