Ordinary Love: Extraordinary performances from Lesley Manville and Liam Neeson in quietly powerful drama

By Linda Barnard

Rating: A

Ordinary Love, a domestic drama that follows a sixty-something couple through the year around a breast cancer diagnosis, relies on simplicity in its extraordinarily powerful examination of a marriage.

Joan (Lesley Manville) and Tom (Liam Neeson) are a long-married, retired Belfast couple. Their conversations are familiar. She goads him into daily walks. They watch TV in the evenings. He sometimes forgets whether his fish was fed, a pet she doesn’t see much point in having. They debate Brussels sprouts and tomato juice in the grocery store. Maybe he’ll give up tea. And who can figure out how a Fitbit works?

Liam Neeson and Lesley Manville play an entirely believable sixtysomething couple in Ordinary Love

Their lives are routine, but they don’t seem bothered by a life that others may call dull. Their affection for each other — his is teasing, which she finds it amusing although occasionally annoying — is clear. He calls her “kid.” They make love. They laugh at silly things. In short, an ordinary life.

It’s not idyllic. There has been profound sorrow in their past. But they have somehow gotten by.

When Joan finds a lump in her breast, she tries to tamp worry down, while practical Tom insists there’s nothing to fear. But there is devastation to come as they begin the slow journey through tests, scans, surgeries and treatment.

Directors Lisa Barros D'Sa and Glenn Leyburn (Cherrybomb, Good Vibrations), take the camera down long hospital corridors. Murky blue light sets a sombre tone, while empty beds underscore Joan’s isolation. 

Playwright Owen McCafferty based his first screenplay on personal experience after his wife’s breast cancer diagnosis and treatment. Directors D’Sa and Leyburn, a married couple, likely bring their own personal perspectives to the film. 

McCafferty’s precise dialogue seems effortless, even when the scenes are tough to watch. Manville and Neeson are exceptional. A pause, an awkward look, moments of tenderness or humour, even how Joan butters a scone, conveys much about them.

The film doesn’t shy away from an accurate account of cancer treatment. Nor, we can presume, is it far off in examining emotional turmoil. There are arguments, occasional fury and despondency.

Joan muses she thought her illness would change her, but claims it hasn’t. We see it has. She befriends a fellow cancer patient in the chemotherapy waiting room, a teacher they knew from their past and once disliked. He becomes the only person Joan can openly confide in about her cancer, including gallows humour and shared laughter.

D’Sa and Leyburn never rush scenes. Each one plays out slowly and carefully as Manville and Neeson reveal more about Joan and Tom through their brilliantly layered performances and the prism of her illness. 

We are offered few details about the couple and their lives outside of this pivotal year, but the film doesn’t suffer for lack of backstories. Instead, we can only focus on Joan and Tom, the cancer and the patterns of daily life that have built over a long and loving marriage.

Ordinary Love. Written by Owen McCafferty, directed by Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn. Starring Lesley Manville and Liam Neeson. Opens Feb. 21