Excellent acting. Considering it was a low budget film is was very cleverly crafted. I didn't take terribly to Vida but her character added gravitas to their relationship. Certainly wouldn't describe it as a romcom; it was complex and veiled in deep sadness. I really want to see how their lives progress.
11 Reviews
Good realistic movie
agapeea11 January 2018
Not All It Could've Been
mcjensen-059242 April 2024
Good story with two fine leads in this cute love story. The lead actress is gorgeous, cute and very charming. A delight to watch on screen. It's a true portrayal of a relationship, with all the accompanying ups and downs. The lead actor is pretty good, but not ideal in the role. Unfortunately there's some very annoying music which pops up here and there. There's a few side stories that go nowhere and serve no purpose other than filling time. After the one hour mark there starts to be some silly and unnecessary parts which detract from the overall tone of the movie. But the real detractor is the animated parts that just appear out of nowhere. It derails the momentum and flow of the film, unfortunately. Anyway, the first half is worth watching and while the second half is merely adequate. Supporting cast is mostly effective. The flaws are few are numerous, yet the movie is still enjoyable. I'm not sure how we end up with a black man being a member of one of the families, but every movie these days needs at least one. And also the obligatory gay person, which wasn't needed in the least and added nothing to the story. It actually made for a rather silly and frivolous scene coming out of left field.
A study in generational trauma
ReadingFilm30 March 2019
He literally urinates on 'art'. It seemed the conflict stemmed from how they faced the pain of their lives; the Jewish generational trauma was either corrected, understood, or experienced through art. The film's thesis was explained via the anecdote relaying the grandmother playing music for the gas chamber victims, and then how the horror in dealing with life passed across generations... the mother gave up music so lives in hell through empty affairs. (She was rather grim, rotted as a consequence of giving up her 'art'.)
Art is the great divine redeemer across this, as in so much of cinema. This opposed to the working class head down, drink and deal that the film seems less interested in. This brings Vida's impulse to read him, to know his pain and see it as the therapy in expression. The creative family are all suffering, there is no solution, and they work it out as culture in art (hence its constant fixation on ritual). The film's collage florid pace and staging made it go by nicely. Vida pursuing medicine as opposite her mother she was hiding within the art and needed grounding, answering why she so loved him.
It made me wonder if they concede it's impossible to know another and art is closer than language. Why it puzzles him is why he's drawn to her with both the stoicism and directness of his family, not in any sense living through abstraction. What she may not have realized is she herself is his artistic escape. That she switched from mother to father pursuing medicine with her mother's death, choosing selflessness for others, rather than selfishness in art... and why the lovers so needed each other: both choosing reality externally but each other internally for their own private creative fulfillment. I think they'll make it within their twin fantasy as outside themselves it will always end with attempting to seek the other.
'Life is not perfect but the children...' as in this correcting symbol of humanity, the blank slate, another expression of this 'ideal.' The ritual of the dual funerals. All the formalities. 'Do you actually care?' Except she needed him to feel a little less to balance and understand her grief. Ellie Kendrick wanting to be a jet pilot is so comically great; the creatives go to the extremes of their imagining. Because it's all or nothing and the imagination conceives the furthest extent. I live through such proclamations. The brother unleashed with his gayness once the mother's repression had lifted brings its symbols home once more.
I found the film truly special, every bit of it reads and the areas of disconnect are the difficulty in knowing another. The Vida performance is so good that I can't imagine it's a performance at all, I can't conceive of this person not being her.
Art is the great divine redeemer across this, as in so much of cinema. This opposed to the working class head down, drink and deal that the film seems less interested in. This brings Vida's impulse to read him, to know his pain and see it as the therapy in expression. The creative family are all suffering, there is no solution, and they work it out as culture in art (hence its constant fixation on ritual). The film's collage florid pace and staging made it go by nicely. Vida pursuing medicine as opposite her mother she was hiding within the art and needed grounding, answering why she so loved him.
It made me wonder if they concede it's impossible to know another and art is closer than language. Why it puzzles him is why he's drawn to her with both the stoicism and directness of his family, not in any sense living through abstraction. What she may not have realized is she herself is his artistic escape. That she switched from mother to father pursuing medicine with her mother's death, choosing selflessness for others, rather than selfishness in art... and why the lovers so needed each other: both choosing reality externally but each other internally for their own private creative fulfillment. I think they'll make it within their twin fantasy as outside themselves it will always end with attempting to seek the other.
'Life is not perfect but the children...' as in this correcting symbol of humanity, the blank slate, another expression of this 'ideal.' The ritual of the dual funerals. All the formalities. 'Do you actually care?' Except she needed him to feel a little less to balance and understand her grief. Ellie Kendrick wanting to be a jet pilot is so comically great; the creatives go to the extremes of their imagining. Because it's all or nothing and the imagination conceives the furthest extent. I live through such proclamations. The brother unleashed with his gayness once the mother's repression had lifted brings its symbols home once more.
I found the film truly special, every bit of it reads and the areas of disconnect are the difficulty in knowing another. The Vida performance is so good that I can't imagine it's a performance at all, I can't conceive of this person not being her.
Very well done, beautiful
vincentkurucz20 August 2017
This movie is so beautiful and special. Considered to be a date movie, a kind of romcom, but it is more - about life. About family, your background, making choices. Good actors. Lydia Wilson is as always great. A must see. Go there, with your husband, with your love, with your friends.
Uncompromising look at differences between couples' backgrounds
ScoobySnacks6621 April 2019
At times difficult to watch but a mostly fascinating look at the challenges couples share when they come from differing socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. Johnny Flynn and Lydia Wilson are a quirky couple living in London who have a mostly annoying relationship that often comes off as mean spirited and passive aggressive in their stubborn inability to give-in to the power struggle that results from her wealth and his working-class background. Common class tropes are explored as they consider the possibility of marriage between one another and ultimately discover that the challenges of marriage to each another brings the additional complications of being married to their in-laws.
Fresh, Honest, Funny
anniemarshallster25 June 2020
Warning: Spoilers
Very intelligently shot on what is clearly not a lavish budget, this film punches way above its weight.
Catch the Port Talbot scenes with the screen broken in half and the follow up split screens later - the story is being intelligently told through its visuals, echoing the theme of the characters - so many things split them apart, but clearly in the end the heart has its reasons.
Love is Thicker Than Water has a very big heart indeed.
It isn't unconventional in its plotting - a "meet cute", followed by a rapturous series of encounters both emotional and sexual, then the meeting with both sets of parents (slight clouds on horizon), then the deaths, then the severe conflicts. And so on and so on. But the uptown girl/downtown boy meme is handled entertainingly (she's Jewish, he's Welsh) and both actors are so funny and delicious and their scenes together are so spontaneous that I was convinced that they weren't rehearsed but were rather a brilliant bit of improv. (As Lydia Wilson and Johnny Flynn are both highly professional actors I concede that that is unlikely).
Talking about professional actors, the whole cast is brilliant from the Big Names down to the very tiny parts. And the director(s), writer(s) and editor(s) are very secure in what they are trying to achieve so there are no moments where you think - WTF.
The animation which is Arthur's thing as well as Vida's cello playing thing are interesting and convincingly portrayed and provide a metaphor for how the relationship shifts from one pole to the other without collapsing.
It's not a pessimist's film I'm delighted to say but it never promises happiness ever after - so it's for the hopeful realists among us.
Enjoy.
Extra Bonus - the music.
Romantic Clash of the Classes
realwrite3 July 2020
Well ... Big fan of Johnny Flynn who simply outshone Vida in this Love is Thicker ...
So I could be biased
But he has a great future ahead of him - as long as he can lose that "I've-been-using-crack-on-the-side complexion.
If you've been raised in a working class family and moved into, at least, an educated, aspirational class, this movie will profoundly resonate. Neither class has superiority in love and hate, trust and betrayal, happiness and grief, but the differences still cause great awkwardness ... Loved the soundtrack
If you've been raised in a working class family and moved into, at least, an educated, aspirational class, this movie will profoundly resonate. Neither class has superiority in love and hate, trust and betrayal, happiness and grief, but the differences still cause great awkwardness ... Loved the soundtrack
Unsparing look at cultural conflicts in love
padrusse3 February 2022
Beautiful
jirawanroper19 August 2021
... to see what happens stick-around to-very-end.. "It lasts as long as it lasts."
bjarias3 July 2023
... there's only one critic's review in English shown on IMDb (and there got panned)... and ten (including this one) user-reviews (all-liking-it)
... cast-exceptional, hardly a weak performance among entire-ensemble... this a very well made enjoyable-little-film, relating much more about how our shared-experiences-differences classify-disunite-us and how we must cope-live with them and each other
... and would bet there's few sticking around till after the ending credits passed-ended, to see how the final scene of the movie was fully played out.. exactly how-what made sense for the both of them and their respective-opposite-families... Port Talbot only being a morning's drive from London, yet world's away-apart when family-backgrounds-clash.
... cast-exceptional, hardly a weak performance among entire-ensemble... this a very well made enjoyable-little-film, relating much more about how our shared-experiences-differences classify-disunite-us and how we must cope-live with them and each other
... and would bet there's few sticking around till after the ending credits passed-ended, to see how the final scene of the movie was fully played out.. exactly how-what made sense for the both of them and their respective-opposite-families... Port Talbot only being a morning's drive from London, yet world's away-apart when family-backgrounds-clash.
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