Think I’ve just seen my favourite film of #TIFF21 so far. Ali & Ava is just fucking beautiful, the kind of film that notices the infinitesimal gestures and moments that make people - with all the messiness of their lives and weight of their pasts - fall in love. 
Here’s a love story that starts with a lift home because it’s been pissing down, whose first kiss comes from chancing an arm on staying the night and getting lumped in a spare room, and which grows against all the baggage that makes us wonder whether we deserve happiness at all.
Of course, we all do. And the overwhelming gorgeousness of this film is in watching Ali & Ava realise this, even as they battle with themselves and their sense of duty to their families and the lives they’ve been leading for so long.
I’ll have more to say soon for @MoviesWeekends, but this is just the absolute pinnacle of working class social realist cinema, the kind of authentic, unforced piece of magic that captures such a specifically British experience and embraces it wholeheartedly.
Claire Rushbrook is indomitable, stoic, real as Ava, a woman we all have known and scarcely celebrate and acknowledge the intricacies of on the big screen. @adeelakhtar1234’s Ali is fantastic too, such a warm figure, quick to humour to diffuse tension but worldly all the same.
Also love the myriad ways in which music elicits feeling and guides meaning throughout - few lines of Dylan and I’m putty in your hands.
For the first time in a bit, I feel energised to write about a film I’ve just seen - this one’s special.
@lisablowerwrite you’d love this!
For the first time in a bit, I feel energised to write about a film I’ve just seen - this one’s special.
@lisablowerwrite you’d love this!
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