Alan in Belfast: The Salt Path – homeless but not without hope, a couple dig deep on an involuntary ‘Camino’ (cinemas from Friday 30 May)

Some people have the freedom to choose to take off and walk long distances. And they do so for many reasons. The Camino de Santiago across the north of Spain is a popular pilgrimage. A communal path that has company along the way if you want it, and space to be on your own if you value the time to think. Others enjoy going for a long hike and wild camping along the way.

New film The Salt Path portrays a semi-fictionalised retelling of Raynor and Moth’s real life experience (available in book form) of starting out from Minehead in Somerset to walk around the coastal path to Land’s End and beyond. As a couple they’d run out of choices. They lost their house on the back of debts following a poor business investment and a lack of legal advice. [Update - a July article in the Observer alleges a different background to the story.] Moth had a recent diagnosis of a rare neurodegenerative disease (CBD): the prognosis was terminal albeit it not immediate enough to qualify for emergency housing as a newly homeless couple. Armed with a pair of rucksacks, a tent, some rice, pasta, and a paltry amount of cash, they set off to live on the coastal path and see where it took them.

“I can’t move my arms or my legs, but other than that I’m good to go.”

Gillian Anderson stars as Ray, a woman who perseveres, who simultaneously copes while not coping, who keeps putting one foot in front of the other, and exudes a practical and heartfelt love for her partner. Jason Isaacs propels Moth up hills and over uneven terrain despite a gait that impedes progress. Anderson’s character is relatively steady. However, Isaacs wobbles between being physically helpless, deeply morbid moments, and an almost superhuman shows of strength in the face of an emergency.

While the dialogue in one scene late in the film will bring tears to your eyes, the quality of the acting is never reliant on the delivery of lines but instead on the glances, gazes and sighs. The actors’ faces and their characters’ demeanours become weathered as the days become weeks and months: Moth’s symptoms mean they rest frequently, and progress is very slow.

Alongside Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s screenplay, director Marianne Elliott and cinematographer Hélène Louvart add a third major character: the stunning scenery and surroundings, with crashing waves, windswept and tide-damaged woodland, soaring birds and lolloping mammals, strong sunshine and horizontal rain. Close-up shots in the tent and in built-up areas they pass through are in sharp contrast to the wide vistas and drone shots capturing the pair walking through landscapes devoid of other humans.

Ray’s constant companion on the route is her much-annotated copy of Paddy Dillon’s Walking Guide of the South West Coast Path. Moth is reading through Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf translation, which becomes the punchline to a running gag about mistaken identity. Watch how those with plenty – individuals, families and businesses – treat the homeless and hungry, and how willingly Ray and Moth offer to share the little that they have.

The moments of human kindness are a tonic throughout the film. The 115-minute run time is perhaps the weakest element: so many scenes from the first half of the real Ray and Moth’s journey are squeezed into the narrative that the passage of time in the cinema does become noticeable.

The Salt Path is being screened in local cinemas including Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 30 May.