Film review: Kinky, violent sex on the agenda in Kelly + Victor

Adapted from a novel by Niall Griffiths, this story of a destructive amour fou is undermined by a double casting flaw.

Antonia Campbell-Hughes and Julian Morris play Kelly and Victor, whose encounter in a Liverpool nightclub leads to an affair, with kinky, violent sex foremost on the agenda. They both have hinterlands, hers with a brutish ex, his with toe-rag mates on the lower rungs of the drug business.

Kieran Evans and his cinematographer Piers McGrail shoot Liverpool with an alluring eeriness – the beautiful Mersey light is unmistakable – and show the city's parks and galleries to advantage.

But something's wrong, and I'm afraid it's a scouse grouse: the leads' accents keep slipping. Given the local talent available to the film-makers it seems perverse to cast two actors who, however accomplished, don't sound like real Liverpudlians.