Ordinary Love

Tell people that the new Liam Neeson and Lesley Manville movie, Ordinary Love, is about a woman struggling with breast cancer, and they might dismiss it as just another medical-procedural weepie. That would be wrong.

Ordinary Love is a touching portrait of a long-married couple, and the medical crisis faced by Joan (Manville) is just the prism through which her relationship with Tom (Neeson) is explored. Directors Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn (Good Vibrations), working with a naturalistic screenplay by Owen McCafferty, keep the filmmaking clear and elegant and keep the focus on the performances.

It’s great to see Neeson in a dramatic role that doesn’t involve fisticuffs and elaborate revenge scenarios and be reminded that at heart he’s a deeply humanistic performer. And Manville, so icy and formidable in Phantom Thread, is here both vulnerable and just slightly reserved, an ideal balance for Joan’s journey. Together, these two skilled performers generate a chemistry that creates a rich and rewarding — and oh so familiar — depiction of a marriage, complete with silent, intimate connections and blow-out battles.

The focus on Tom and Joan is both productive and limiting. There’s neither the rallying of a friends’ support network nor the hollow platitudes of co-workers one might expect, and the isolation turns Ordinary Love into more of a chamber play than a full drama. There are some beautiful images and camera moves, and superb performances both from the leads and from the secondary couple that’s eventually introduced, but for all its achievements, the limited scope and number of actors unfortunately keeps the audience reaction muted.

Now playing at Grail Moviehouse