It's 35 minutes before anyone smiles in Tinge Krishnan’s bruised debut, but when it happens it’s beautiful.
The brilliant Eddie Marsan’s ex-soldier is teaching teenage stray Candese Reid self defence when she starts, irrepressibly, to dance instead. It can’t last.
And just as these characters’ fortunes tip back towards tragedy, so too does this intimate drama ultimately overreach with gangland excesses and a plot involving Romola Garai’s whitecollar wastrel.
But it’s an impressive two-hander about sensitive souls facing stark realities – the lovers who life forces to become fighters.
