Elvis Costello’s I Want You is one of the sexiest, most exquisitely masochistic laments ever written. Director Harry Wootliff (a woman) isn’t the first to use it in a film, but the song has never been deployed to more jolting effect. At various points, Costello groans: “Oh my baby baby, I love you more than you can tell.” The couple in the relationship drama Only You want to have a child. Oh baby, let the torture begin.
Josh O’Connor and Laia Costa are Elena and Jake, two non-Scots living in Glasgow. He’s a 26-year-old PhD student and part-time DJ from England. She’s a 35-year-old arts administrator from Spain. After meeting on New Year’s Eve they realise they’re perfect for each other and assume having a child will be a cinch. But one pregnancy test after another proves them wrong, and soon they’re sinking money they don’t have into gruelling, tummy-bruising rounds of IVF.
Not selling it as a fun night out, am I? Yet Only You is full of humour and earthy energy. Elena mocks DJs with choice words designed to make those of us who don’t revere DJs smile. Later, a brutal doctor tells Elena she has “low-quality eggs”. Elena: “What if he’s right?” Jake: “What if he’s a c***?” The performances are as witty as the script. At one point, Costa picks up a tampon with the air of a Samurai warrior about to commit seppuku.
O’Connor was extraordinary in gay love story God’s Own Country, and Costa was just as intense in one-take thriller Victoria. The pair interact in a way that feels modern. That said, they have olde-time charisma too. It’s like watching James Dean and Natalie Wood flirt and weep in Rebel Without a Cause. Other pleasures include bold edits and folk songs that slyly broaden the film’s scope, such as Josh Macrae’s spine-tingling tirade against tyranny, Castlereagh.
Only You challenges the tyrannical idea that a thirtysomething female needs to breed in order to be happy, even as it deeply sympathises with Elena, who has swallowed that idea whole. O’Connor has argued that Only You is “as important as I, Daniel Blake”. He’s right. Via Elena and Jake, Wootliff champions the marginal and so-called imperfect. All hail a lacerating romance that somehow gets us in the mood for love.
