IT WAS ENGLISH

There’s a peculiar sort of ache that comes from bumping into your past — not in some Facebook-shaped algorithmic fashion, but physically, viscerally. A real collision. On a damp platform. With no warning. “It Was English” knows this ache. It doesn’t dramatise it. It simply lets it happen — raw, unannounced, and utterly believable.

Brian Petchers’ short film, though only minutes in length, carries the emotional weight of a decade-long relationship. It’s not so much a story as it is a sensation — the sudden shiver when memory meets reality and neither blinks. We follow Clark, a young poet with his head in a book and his heart clearly somewhere it oughtn’t still be, as he stumbles into Mal: the unresolved chapter that never quite stopped writing itself.

The film’s brilliance lies not in its premise — which could, in less careful hands, have felt like a rom-com rejected by fate — but in its restraint. Dialogue is sparse, but loaded. Glances carry more than monologues ever could. The poetry — literal and metaphorical — isn’t overstated; it lingers like steam from a street vent, curling through the frame.

There’s a subtle sleight-of-hand in the way Petchers manipulates tone. The world Clark imagines — warm, fluid, gilded with golden-hour memory — is a universe away from the awkward, angular rigidity of reality. The contrast is chilling, not because it’s cruel, but because it’s recognisable. We’ve all built palaces of ‘what ifs’ in our heads. This film simply dares to open the door and show what’s inside: the joy, the hurt, the terrifying smallness of actual moments compared to their imagined weight.

Visually, the film is lush without being indulgent. Cinematographer Dan Kennedy steers us through Clark’s emotional labyrinth with long, meandering takes that feel like memories unspooling themselves. The score, meanwhile, hums quietly beneath — not demanding your attention, just knowing it’ll get under your skin eventually.

“It Was English” isn’t about love rekindled. It’s about love refracted. A prism of nostalgia, hope, and that familiar sinking feeling when timing gets the last laugh. By the end, we’re left not with closure, but with a feeling. And that’s the power of this film — it doesn’t resolve; it resonates.

And maybe that’s what makes it linger. Like a poem scribbled on the back of a receipt, folded into a coat pocket, and rediscovered years later on another cold night. Not everything is meant to last. But some things, no matter how brief, are worth remembering.

A quietly exquisite short. The kind that hits you half an hour after it’s over. Just when the train doors close.

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