Writer and Director: Jane Gull
Love Without Walls is a brilliant, charming, intense drama carried by a pair of fantastic actors and a good script. It’s about a young married couple, Paul and Sophie, living contentedly if impecuniously in Camden. A gradual series of misfortunes leads to their falling through society’s safety net. Sophie (a magnetic Shana Swash) is studying photography while picking up casual work and managing the career of her husband Paul (an equally magnetic Niall McNamee), a talented but undiscovered singer-songwriter. Paul gets cash in hand for gigs, and they’re happy in their scruffy flat, with their dog and their LPs, dreaming up artistic projects.
McNamee himself is a singer-songwriter, and it is his haunting songs which give the film its special poignancy. ‘Step by step’ creates the tone of the couple’s journey, celebrating love which endures through seeming impossible struggle. Its lines ‘As soon as I get to my front door/Those eyes begin to shine’ is quietly suggestive of the importance of having your own front door and living within walls. And there’s another effective theme: Paul’s repetition of London streets names as he works for the Knowledge becomes almost incantatory, a soothing charm against gathering despair. At the start of the film, he’s within sight of being awarded his London taxi driver’s licence – a useful fall back.
But clouds begin to darken when first after Paul’s motorbike is stolen and then they are evicted by their landlord. Paul’s sister Debbie would take them in, but her aggressive husband kicks them out. So the pair decide to try their luck in Southend, hoping for a bit of kindness from an former musician friend. Luck, however, is not on their side. Nor is kindness. The old mate now boasts of his “proper job,” asking cruelly, “What happened to your record deal?” He refuses them even one night on his sofa, so Paul and Sophie have to sleep in their old 2CV. When the police tow that away, they’ve no where to sleep. Sophie, always an optimist, tells Paul she’s been wanting to sleep under the stars. The reality, of course, is unromantic. But at least as Sophie’s new chambermaiding job offers illicit access to a shower.
The reality of existence without a fixed address is harsh. Their credit cards stops working; Paul loses their only phone charger and when a homeless guys pinches his one pair of boots, he’s forced to steal trainers from a charity shop. But the couple still somehow manage to find joy in their relationship. In a lovely scene they chalk out the dimensions of imaginary rooms of a dream house where they’ll each have separate studio. And they’re kind. Paul intervenes when a gang of lads start mocking a disabled homeless man; Sophie speaks kindly to a woman she hears crying in a toilet. Even when Paul is at his most demoralised, he won’t crush a snail, its shell a miniature symbol of home.
When Sophie gets a place in women’s hostel, their enforced separation brings calamity. They’re on the point of going back to London and trying again, when Paul cheerily goes off in search of day labour. What follows is nightmarish. He inadvertently gets picked up by a gang who keep forced labourers in sub-human conditions, beating up anyone who tries to escape.
The storytelling is economical, if at times there is some narrative corner-cutting. The glimpse of Sophie’s past relationship with alcohol is effective, as are the scenes when, abandoning her hard-won sobriety, she reveals her nasty side. But quite how she ends up in a nice hospital side ward fails to convince. But overall Love Without Walls is both warm and gripping. At times it’s a painful watch, but it’s a forcefully truthful one.
Love Without Walls is now available on Digital Download and can be purchased HERE.
