This is a film I initially resisted going to see because things have got so bad with my emotional threshold that I now sob at tv adverts. And you just know that anything even loosely based on an Oscar Wilde story, set in a bleak, industrial but hauntingly beautiful northern landscape that revolves around the friendship between two teenage boys and their tenuous relationship with the local 'Giant' scrap metal merchant - oh and throw in some horses - isn't going to end well. I don't even think that I need to say 'Spoiler Alert' before confirming that inevitably, it doesn't. Yet thanks to the sparkling and joyfully natural performances of the central  boys, the unsentimental yet tender direction of Clio Barnard and the exquisite cinematography of Mike Eley, the film never falls into hyperbolic cliche and the final mood is that of redemption rather than despair; reflection rather than melodrama. Silence, or rather the removal of any extraneous sensations at moments of unbearable intensity, heightens the drama without sensationalising it, forcing the viewer into the landscape, to reflect upon the smallness of life and the potency of it.

Perhaps, more than anything else, the film is remarkably full of love; carefully drawn in the loyal and affectionate relationship between the boys, in the strong bond they have with their caring, if despairing mothers, and then in that extraordinary, epiphanic moment, that act of instinctive sacrifice when the 'Giant' steps up wearily, as if it were something he should have done a long time ago. It is a moment when the director more than nods towards Wilde for the common threads that tie the film together; those of love and the acceptance of humanity, in all its shapes and forms, alongside the basic human need for forgiveness and absolution. It is, quite simply, a very beautiful film. And yes, I cried a lot at the end.