Kelly + Victor review

Far removed from your usual British meet-cute, Kieran Evans’ adaptation of Niall Griffiths’ rough-hewn novel mixes unsafe S&M with social desolation to choppy effect.

Sometime documentarian Evans and DoP Piers McGrail frame Liverpool as a snapshot of battered Britain, while Antonia Campbell-Hughes and Julian Morris commit as lovers linked by despair.

But their characters rarely rise above ciphers, a failure exacerbated as the sex turns savage. The sense of damaged souls passing on their pain is hinted at, but the lack of depth renders the results deadening.