Even before the title characters in Clio Barnard’s “Ali and Ava” meet, a brief musical montage early on binds them together in moments of isolation. Ali is a British Pakistani landlord who does occasional work as a DJ; Ava is an Irish-born schoolteacher and a single mother of five. They both live in Bradford, leading working-class lives. In an early scene, as Ava takes a lonely bus ride to work and Ali walks through the street, greeting many but walking alone, Sammi Smith’s plaintive “Saunders Ferry Lane” plays. ‘Nothing moves in Saunders Ferry Lane’, Smith sings, while Ava longingly observes a couple embracing. The sense of stagnation permeates, giving us a window into these characters who have yet to meet, and it sets up a clear link between their domestic lives, as well as “Ali and Ava”’s sharp relationship with music selections as a central motif to establishing its characters.
The Sammi Smith scene occurs a mere six minutes into “Ali and Ava” and is the third track of the film. The first is a brief scene where we find Ali dancing in wild abandonment, alone, to Afro-futurist’s Onipa’s “I know”, and the second is an early dance scene between two of Ava’s children set to A. R. Rahman’s “Chaiyya Chaiyya”. Many more musical selections will come, many of them diegetic sounds where Ali and Ava bond over their love for music. His DJ work is a hopeless dream; her karaoke performances offer brief respite from a humdrum life. But the range of music throughout the film works on a deeper level. Both characters are, in some ways, out of place in Bradford but they are also stuck there as if limited by the smallness of their environment. The music – stretching across eras, geographical spaces, and genres – reflects that restlessness ambivalence, the tentative reaching out for something different but on a modest scale that fits the gentleness of the romance that will build between the two.
“Ali and Ava” has the misfortune of being one of a handful of films that premiere at a film festival, receive a confusing roll-out, leaving uncertainty as to which year it belongs to, and ends up being accidentally forgotten at the end of the year. Barnard’s romance premiered at Cannes in 2021 before a festival rollout that included the Toronto International Film Festival later that year. Its splotchy release to regular audiences, both in theatres and digitally, varied across countries. Now available for home viewing, on streaming and DVD, it feels like a bit of an afterthought as many prepare for the September to December onslaught of major film releases. But even as the last third of 2022 promises a range of excellent films, “Ali and Ava” will sit high on the best of 2022 (or 2021) lists. Its modesty is its advantage.
Like any good romance, this is about more than just the overtures of love between the characters at the centre. Their first meeting underscores this. By chance, Ali is around to offer Ava a ride home from work. His arrival in a neighbourhood not known for friendliness towards South Asians sets up a taut note to the scene, that’s interrupted with music but also by Ali’s own trenchant likelihood to subvert our notions of what to expect. Ava is charmed by his brashness. He is charmed by her earnestness. This dynamic is bolstered by the chemistry between Adeel Akhtar and Claire Rushbrook, who take the complexity of Barnard’s script (she writes and directs) and offer both their characters peculiar notes to characterise their specificity – the way that Rushbrook’s eyes follow everything in Ava’s proximity, the way that Akhtar deliberately turns his body into something imposing, or benign, as various scenes play out.
The friendship-to-lovers romance that follows is only part of the film’s larger framework. Ava’s past with abusive spouses, and an older son grappling with his own resentment of his family dynamics offers an incisive arc exploring contemporary young-adult malaise. Ali is separated, but still lives with his wife (Ellora Torchia is excellent in a tricky supporting role) to avoid dealing with his traditional family’s response to his failed marriage. Larger socio-political concerns of race, class, poverty, and nationalism all filter through here as Barnard’s cinéma verité style offers a searing glimpse of contemporary working-class England and with it that thoughtful assessment of loneliness as inherent to life in the 21st century. Against that default loneliness, Ali and Ava find themselves reaching towards each other and “Ali and Ava” finds itself reaching emotional heights with its acute perceptiveness. The romance is not in the easiness of their rapport, but in their individual insistence in not being alone. Isn’t that something we can all relate to?
There are versions of this film that I can imagine going very wrong. A version that plays things more emotionally removed, something more intentionally slapstick, something that irreverently perceives its characters with ironic distance, or something that takes the social realism to maudlin borders that become absurd. But Barnard’s approach is up close and personal, Ole Bratt Birkeland’s camera favours close-ups that emphasise the realist approach here. But realism is not a stand-in for dullness, but instead is an engaging willingness to bring the audience into this world with stunning clarity. Current trends in media literacy have recognised the new waves of “comfort” films, where media about good people becomes equated being good by virtue of being about good people. A “heart-warming” film is good because it counters the sadness of our reality rather than for being creatively astute. “Ali and Ava”, about a couple of good people trying their best, might superficially fit that framework. But what “Ali and Ava” does that so many of the adulated “heart-warming” film and TV don’t do is do more than offer something that could be heart-warming on the surface.
The waves of empathy for these characters and the world they inhabit is profound, but moreover “Ali and Ava” in its thirst for goodness is not just resting on its kindness of its spirit but its wondrous sharpness technical proficiency. It is a wonder, and a true astonishment, that its surface level straightforward visuals belie an economical and affecting aesthetic approach. This is the kind of socio-political work that many independent filmmakers work towards, but which often becomes dulled in a sheen of miserabilism. Barnard sees these people, really sees them, and through her eyes we see them too, with a sincerity that resists cloyingness, simplification, or condescension. In the modest gentleness of the love-story at the centre, “Ali and Ava” feels like a profound gem of a film that has so much to say about the ways we cling to each other for support in a world that is often uninviting.
