Helen Walsh’s gripping sophomore feature On the Sea is the kind of atypical, authentic gay coming-of-age story we need more of. The narrative focuses on a fortysomething, married mussel farmer in North Wales who finds himself falling for a younger man.
Jack (Barry Ward) is a small-town, working-class bloke living the kind of life that was expected of him. He married his childhood sweetheart, Maggie (Liz White), and they had a sullen teenage son, Tom (Henry Lawfull). During the day he works with his jackass, brute of a brother Dyfan (Celyn Jones) and his nephews, mussel farming.
It’s a simple life, that is until a young, good-looking vagabond deckhand, Daniel (a terrific Lorne MacFadyen), arrives and subtly begins to pursue Jack. Initially put off, Jack begins to give in to his long-buried feelings and embarks on a love affair with Daniel that will have lasting repercussions.
Ward delivers an exceptional, layered turn as Jack, whose repression had driven him deep inside himself, but who slowly awakens to a world he never imagined possible. Jack’s arc is quite moving and wholly believable thanks to Ward’s slowly rendered, potent brush strokes towards a fully realized canvas where his character is able to discover a brighter and truer existence. His feelings of anguish and longing are palpable.
Walsh’s exploration of masculinity is fascinating. She has a way of using the visual medium to great effect. We experience Jack’s anguish and longing, mostly from his facial expressions and body movement as conveyed by Ward.
The Dublin-born thesp made his acting debut “street cast” for the BBC One miniseries Family, directed by Michael Winterbottom, in 1994, at the age of 13. He would go on to appear on stage in several shows, then return to TV for Plotlands in 1998. A year later he landed his first major screen part opposite Cillian Murphy in Nelson Hume’s Sunburn. Ward’s breakthrough film role occurred in 2014 as the titular character in Ken Loach’s Jimmy’s Hall, which bowed at the Cannes Film Festival. That same year he starred in Luke Seomore and Joseph Bull’s Blood Cells, which premiered at the Venice International Film Festival.
Other notable film credits: Michael Winterbottom’s The Claim (2000), Paul Mercier’s Pursuit (2015), Mike Ahern & Enda Loughman’s Extra Ordinary(2019) and David Freyne’s Dating Amber (2020). He co-stars in Grant Gee’s upcoming biodrama, Everybody Digs Bill Evans, which won the Silver Bear for Best Director at this year’s Berlinale (Berlin Film Festival).
His TV work includes the series Britannia, The Capture, White Lines, Anne Boleyn, Bad Sisters, Clean Sweep and Trespasses.
On the Sea bowed at the Edinburgh International Film Festival last year and will be shown at Atlanta’s Out on Film LGBTQ+ Spring Mini-Fest on March 18th. Tickets and more info HERE.
The Contending had a terrific video chat with Ward about the film and his career.
