The novelist/filmmaker’s second feature stars Barry Ward and Lorne MacFadyen

On The Sea

Source: Red Union Films

‘On The Sea’

Dir/scr: Helen Walsh. UK. 2025. 115mins

A slow-burn attraction upends a traditional life in UK writer/director Helen Walsh’s Welsh coast drama, whose narrative restraint belies its emotional impact. Continuing the theme of humanity on the margins which is central to all of Walsh’s work as both novelist and filmmaker, On The Sea combines astute observational writing with powerful performances and evocative cinematography to create a low-key yet vivid portrait of a man coming to terms with himself.

Frank, sensitive and shot through with genuine feeling

Alongside penning prize-winning novels ‘Brass’, ‘Once Upon A Time In England’ and ‘The Lemon Grove’, Walsh also wrote and directed the 2015 feature The Violators, which also premiered in Edinburgh and played several festivals before a small domestic release. This follow-up is likely to follow a similar trajectory, although solid word of mouth could help attract appreciative audiences.

Jack (Barry Ward) owns a small mussel farming business with his young brother Dyfan (Celyn Jones) in a small coastal community in North Wales (the film shot on Anglesey). Opening sequences show the men methodically undertaking the backbreaking work that has obviously been in their family for generations; the presence of Dyfan’s young sons suggest there is a hope it will be continue to be passed down. But Jack’s own son, Tom (Henry Lawfull), is reluctant to get his feet wet and has other ambitions away from this small town – something that causes unspoken tension between Jack and Dyfan, who accuses his older brother of being “too soft.”

In fact, while Jack may initially seem at home in this wild rural landscape, shot in subdued, washed-out blues and greys by DoP Sam Goldie (who lensed Walsh’s 2014 TV thriller The Gathering), there’s something immediately uneasy about the way he carries himself, in his interactions with his wife – and childhood sweetheart – Maggie (Liz White). As Jack goes through the motions of his daily routine, Walsh plays him as a man who is holding something back, not entirely comfortable in this life he has carved out for himself.

This tension rachets up when young deckhand Daniel (Lorne MacFadyen) arrives in search of summer work, and something sparks deep within Jack. While the direction of narrative travel from this point may be unsurprising, Walsh’s nuanced screenplay takes care to follow the natural contours of this relationship and its setting. Daniel’s quiet confidence in his own skin is in stark contrast to the anger and shame Jack feels as he comes to understand that expressing his true self means hurting the people he holds most dear.

As with The Violators, which was set in Cheshire’s urban wastelands, location plays a vital role here. While Daniel may just be passing through, and has nothing to lose, Jack has deep roots in this small, cloistered community which puts great stock in tradition and doesn’t take kindly to outliers. Yet Walsh doesn’t belabour these points, or turn any of her characters into stock backward bumpkins. A heightened natural soundscape emphasises the dichotomy between windswept isolation and claustrophobic intimacy of this town where everyone knows everyone, a million miles away from more diverse – and anonymous – urban centres.

Even within these confines, the chemistry between Jack and Daniel is palpable, and soon spills into the physical. Sex scenes are frank, sensitive and shot through with genuine feeling; buoyed by Felix Rosch’s lilting score, there’s a sense that, in another time and place, the pair could have found some form of happiness together. It’s notable that Daniel, for all his sexual ease, is a transient figure, forever moving on, unable to find somewhere to really belong.

In a places such as this, secrets can’t stay buried for long – but, even in the inevitable reveal, Walsh takes care to remain true to her characters and their motivations. And if things begin to veer towards the melodramatic in the film’s final stages, the strength of Walsh’s writing, and of the world she has built, keep it on an even keel.

Production company: Red Union Film

International sales: The Yellow Affair, contact@yellowaffair.com

Producers: David A Hughes, David Moores

Cinematography: Sam Goldie

Production design: Kevin Dee, Adam Forshaw

Editing: Ricardo Saraiva

Music: Felix Rosch

Main cast: Barry Ward, Lorne MacFadyen, Liz White, Celyn Jones, Henry Lawfull