True Things

Ever been in a relationship that felt more like an intoxicating addiction? That's the situation for Katie, a down on her luck benefits worker in a UK seaside town.

Ruth Wilson is fantastic as Katie. Every movement and smile conveys the desperate neediness of someone lacking self love and connection. Tom Burke is a solid love rat, and their chemistry bubbles throughout the film.

There are some nice handheld shots, but nothing too ambitious. Worth watching, nothing to write home about.

A sudden fling can become the only window to a better future when people are trapped by life. I saw this in the story but avobe all in Ruth Wilson's performance: she is truth itself.

I'll start with why this movie deserves to be called a film. This movie leaves you hanging with constantly wondering, questioning even, what the protagonist, a role fantastically played by Ruth Miller, is going to do next or what the cause of her suffering is, although the assumption is it's a bored and unfulfilled person just looking for some new action.

This is not the "person on a journey of self discovery" type film one would expect as it cannot be boxed in to this type of genre. This movie really gets down to a person's pain that causes a withdrawal from one's life. A withdrawal that fills a person with grief and a loathing of, and to, the self and the life being lived.

How did this whole framing of turmoil, insecurity, emotional pain, and grief actually happen on the screen?

I'll tell you how; fantastic acting, editing, and direction along with the whole group of glorious collaborators that created an enthralling piece of work. Mr. Blond remains enigmatic through the entire flick.

Ruth Wilson plays an isolated single woman with low self-esteem who hooks up with a 'bad boy' and that's the whole story. It plays out in slow, miserable, unsurprising ways. Plot development? Never heard of it. This a deeply uninteresting look at boring characters going nowhere. Think Mike Leigh, but without composition, character or compassion.

The trouble is, Ruth Wilson is a good actress and manages to make this dishwater script seem more engaging than it really is, so well done Ruth. Tom Burke is fine, but his character suffers the same problem - he's bland, badly written (if written at all) and has all the complexity of a child's stick drawing.

It's self-indulgent, patience-testing guff which leaves its actors to do all the work but, ultimately, they don't have enough work to do.

...and you don't have the slightest idea what that might be...(but at least you know what it is you don't want).

This film is not about romance, nor a fling or unrequitted love. It's about.a person lost in the chaos of life, lacking direction, self-esteem and balance, and craving for a purpose to live, other than what it's apparent and has been impossed as a normal life to follow: a job, a family, kids.... I understand that people who have probably never gone through theses patches of despair and nothingness could find the film boring, slow and tedious. My reccommendation is, if you don't feel caught and curious from the very beginning, just let it go and look for another pearl...there are so many...