A quiet flat after a night out. Two people who look gentle with each other.
When she takes off her make-up, a bruise appears, and the room goes cold.
Dearbhla Walsh’s Valentine’s Day film for Hozier’s “Cherry Wine” stars Saoirse Ronan with Moe Dunford, and it turns a soft melody into a hard truth about domestic abuse.
Proceeds from the single were donated to domestic-abuse charities, and the timing on 14 February made the point impossible to miss.
The Cherry Wine lyrics are sung from a man’s point of view. He tells himself harm is a kind of love.
On record the narrator is a man and he uses “she” throughout. The video flips that lens, casting Saoirse Ronan as the survivor opposite Moe Dunford. It underlines that abuse is not bound to one gender.
Hozier has said he wanted to show how hard it can be to face abuse and how easily affection can be used to excuse it.
Certain lines carry that logic in plain daylight.
“Open hand or closed fist would be fine,” treats a hit as devotion.
“Blood is rare and sweet as cherry wine” turns injury into something to prize.
“Sleep to the freezing” sounds like rest but reads like a numb calm after violence.
Those phrases sit softly against the guitar, which is why so many listeners first hear a love song and only later notice the bruises hiding in the words.
The video answers with a face that does not look away. Though it doesn’t show the actual abuse, it chooses to show us their loving moments and then her black eye when she’s alone. Frequently that’s how it works.
There is a reason the performance feels close. The album version is a live take recorded in the early hours, with birds in the background, so the tenderness sounds real even when the story is not safe.
It was recorded live at around 5 a.m., with birds audible in the room.
That detail keeps the Hozier’s Cherry Wine meaning conversation alive every February. People return to the lyric and the film and hear the song differently.
The track sits on Hozier’s 2014 debut. The charity single arrived on 12 February 2016.
The video premiered on 14 February with Walsh directing and Ronan and Dunford starring.
The campaign carried #FaceUpToDomesticViolence, and sales were donated to domestic-abuse organisations in multiple countries.
Hozier’s own line is the clearest way to frame it, and it fits inside one sentence: he tried to get across the difficulty of coming to terms with domestic violence. Everything in the song and the film serves that aim.
If you need support: UK National Domestic Abuse Helpline 0808 2000 247.
Safe Ireland lists local services across the country. If you are in immediate danger, call 999 in the UK or 112/999 in Ireland.