This one's a beautiful, tender, quiet romantic drama with a moody atmosphere, set in a tight knit Welsh fishing community. It's a touching story about a man waking up sexually in the middle of his life, and how he, his family, and everyone around him deal with it, which makes it emotional and sentimental without ever getting over the top. The slow burn plays out against a landscape that's as bleak as it is gorgeous, where quiet, closed off men are stuck inside rigid ideas of what masculinity should be. Some people might be reminded of "God's Own Country," but I think both films are lovely in their own way. Jack is a middle aged guy who co-owns a mussel farm with his rough around the edges brother Dyfan, and the tension between the two of them is simmering under the surface right from the start. Dyfan's three sons all help out with the work, while Jack's sulky teenage son Tom keeps skipping out. Jack's been with his wife since they were both 16, and...
Adam and James are hockey rivals who genuinely cannot stand each other, until a shared punishment somehow ends with them hooking up, which catches them both completely off guard. If that was not already a lot to process, they then discover that their parents, his mom and his dad, are in a relationship and heading toward marriage, which makes them stepbrothers. Now sharing a bed under the same roof, they go from barely putting up with each other to something neither of them planned for. James makes the first move, kind of easing his way toward Adam through flirtation, but then the drama kicks in when a girl shows up who used to live next door to Adam and James starts getting jealous. His response is to pretend to be dating someone else, which sets off another round of the same kind of back and forth. Meanwhile at school and on the ice they are still all-out rivals, while behind closed doors they keep ending up in bed together. The pressure point arrives when the draft for top players comes up and neither of them is sure they are ready to let anyone know what is actually going on between them. Then on the day of the final match they win, and in the middle of it all they pull each other into a kiss right there in front of everyone, parents, coach and all, and both of them get picked.
Since it is vertical, the pacing does exactly what you expect, burning through the shift from enemies to something emotionally vulnerable at a speed that leaves no room to breathe, and yet somehow it all lands without feeling too jarring. The bigger issue is the AI side of things. The emotions on the characters' faces frequently feel off, like the expressions have been placed there rather than actually felt, and no matter how you look at it that creates a distance that a real performance does not. It is not that standard vertical BLs are some high benchmark to clear, but there is still a gap. What actually worked was the physical chemistry between Adam and James, the mutual attraction feels present and they keep manufacturing reasons to get close, which gives the show at least one thing that functions. The girlfriends are just filler drama and thankfully neither of them is played as a villain. The whole thing leans toward a positive resolution and does not wallow in unnecessary darkness. As a curiosity, as a test case for whether AI-generated long-form content can hold your attention, it is worth a look if you are wondering where this technology is heading. As for whether it actually gets there yet, the answer is not really. (3/10)
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