After Love review – A tense thrilling tale of tragedy and grief

After Love
(12A) 89mins
★★★★

TO lose the love of your life unexpectedly is devastating enough, let alone discovering once they have gone that they have been lying to you for decades.

Mary Hussain (Joanna Scanlan from The Thick Of It and No Offence), converted to Islam when she married childhood sweetheart Ahmed and the couple settled happily in Dover, Kent, where Ahmed worked as a cross-Channel ferry captain.

But behind the seemingly humdrum domesticity of their long life together lies a startling secret.

Following his sudden death, Mary discovers her husband has a teenage son, Solomon (Talid Ariss), and a girlfriend, Geneviève (Natalie Richard) 21 miles away, across the water in Calais.

Grappling with his duplicity, Mary sets out to confront the “other woman” on her doorstep.

But when Geneviève wrongly assumes she is a cleaner and invites her in, Mary instead finds herself thrust directly into the heart of the other family of the man she loved.