On DVD: "brilliantlove"

A strained but intriguing debut from director Ashley Horner and writer Sean Conway, brilliantlove concerns a pair of dreamers - some might say dossers - living out of a lock-up garage in a remote corner of the picturesque North. Noon (Nancy Trotter Landry) does creative things like pinning ribbons to the bodies of dead birds she finds on her travels, while her beau Manchester (Liam Browne) repeatedly demonstrates his immaturity by shoplifting ice pops and mislaying nude photographs of his beloved in the pub. The pair inhabit their own little world, pootling by day, fucking by night, but their lives are about to change. Big Art comes a-callin', in the form of a rich gallery owner who specialises in upmarket erotica - at which point Manchester finds all his idiosyncrasies being co-opted for commerce, Noon feels her privacy being violated, and these two kids discover they're not in Kansas anymore.

It's an earthy, intense tale that demands a lot of its performers, and the previously unknown leads actually fare much better than their contemporaries in Michael Winterbottom's not dissimilar 9 Songs. You'd expect characters called Noon and Manchester to be somewhat out there, but but both prove far less annoying than they could have been: Browne makes his cheeky, horny, lovelorn chappie goofily charming, while Trotter Landry exudes a matter-of-fact, at times confrontational sexuality - her self-recorded "Orgasm Diaries", which should by rights be excruciating, are instead frank and funny.

The artworld business, painted in broad strokes as a corrupting force of evil, doesn't work - it very rarely does on screen, even in more experienced hands - but the film looks sharp, and the sex is pretty good, too: with none of that designer miserablism Winterbottom subscribed to, the action is hard, liberating and rapturous - almost Lawrentian, you're tempted to say, and it's precisely that lack of self-consciousness that catches your eye here. Enterprising distributor Soda's New British Cinema scheme previously produced the engaging 1,2,3,4 and the terrific Skeletons. This latest's distinctive and very promising: more, please.

brilliantlove is available on DVD from Monday.