Love, romance, sex. Three things that mean different things to different people, which can be experienced as a combination or separately. Hardly discussed but always present, always motivating our society. Measures by which we compare ourselves to others and are led to judge our individual worth. But what happens when these things are distorted? Distorted by perspective above all, but by history, by time, by social constructions? And what about the pressures that they bring, the pressures that they dissipate? In your thirties, these questions become increasingly pervasive, and for women they can become almost ubiquitous. "When are you going to settle down?" “Who will take care of you?” "When are you going to have children?" Harry Wootliff's film adaptation of Deborah Kay Davies' "True Things About Me" is, at least in part, an intimate study of these pressures and their growing rigidity in the face of a dissolving psyche, and an attempt somehow to understand the value of loving oneself. absent self from the expectation that comes with being a single woman marching towards her 40th birthday.
Based on two expressive performances by some of British cinema's most respected and consistent dramatic artists, Ruth Wilson (Dark River) and Tom Burke (The Souvenir), the 2022 dramatic thriller True Things (originally released at film festivals in 2021) is eroticism, dominance, generational difference, and gender expectation, explored through a time-warped, dream-infused narrative that simultaneously brings out the majesty of Ruth Wilson's nuanced method of acting, and yet However, he seems lost trying to insinuate what he fails to establish adequately.\
Director: Harry Wootliff
Writers: Harry Wootliff, Molly Davies, Deborah Kay Davies
Stars: Ruth Wilson, Tom Burke, Hayley Squires
Ruth Wilson's Kate begins an affair with a nervous client named Blond, played by Tom Burke. As soon as he asks her to take her stockings down, she falls in love with him, takes time off from work and lends him her car. She is quiet, seemingly distant from much of what goes on in the world, while he is self-confident, partier, and pub-goer, but an ex-convict not too long out of prison. His existences mirror each other, each learning to walk again after so long in their own versions of exile. To her, he is an almost mythical presence who appears at her wish, while he does not seem to be sure what she is to him.
Co-writer/director Harry Wootliff introduces this narrative with a strong bent toward the surreal, Blond's genius appearances out of the blue sometimes coming across as figments of his hero's imagination and other times as the truth from the kitchen sink. kitchen. Similarly, the dream sequences are deeply tied to Kate's journey, but are presented in a way that seems disjointed at best, off-putting at worst, and never seems to emphasize anything. Certainly Wootliff's work never seems to directly say this or that, or even that he is trying not to say anything at all. True Things, as a result, seems to lack a clear vision, a serious thematic enterprise, and instead seems inexperienced or at least experimental, while never having the emotional skills or visual wonder to win over the best parts of its imagination.
It's a real shame because Wootliff and company successfully establish all the themes already presented in this review, and take the time to pull each one as if they're about to set their intent, but then the film is stretched in another direction. , finally coming to lack any sense of indisputable truth. There's just nothing here to investigate, although it certainly does its best to maintain a sense of intrigue, of mystery, of excitement.
At its worst, True Things are cheap, nasty dialogue exchanges, two-dimensional supporting characters that lack any sense of realistic motivation (a real shame for me, Daniel Blake actress Hayley Squires, who plays best friend of Kate), and narratively weak. He even has trouble with the sound mix and seems at times to be at odds with his own sense of whether it's a TV-ready drama, a cinematic headfuck or a whirlwind romance, the silencing of each of these perspectives forming something more visual. -rolling that interesting.
At its best, it's another reliably relatable, empathy-driven performance by the most underrated and exceptionally talented British actress of the moment, Ruth Wilson, and reinforces the delight and aura of Tom's rising bad-boy sex icon status. Burke.
Watch True Things 2022 Movie Trailer
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