Director Harry Wootliff and co-writer Molly Davies’ True Things (2021), adapted from Deborah Kay Davies’ novel True Things About Me (2010), is one of those films that gets under your skin. It should not be passively spoken about, but actively responded to, especially given the rhetoric of Boris Johnson’s Conservative government, “Build back better.” The film stirs up existential feelings and questions about what it is to live in a broken Britain with a re-emerging class system and the threat of voter suppression that will devalue and not empower the population.
Disillusioned with her job in the benefits office and the dead-ends of the dating scene, Kate (Ruth Wilson) represents common frustrations. When an ex-prisoner (Tom Burke) sits down at her desk to apply for financial support, she finds herself attracted to his outspoken confidence. Soon the two are hooking up for casual encounters and days out. Is Kate repeating familiar mistakes, or does he offer her an escape?
Wootliff’s feature début Only You (2018) and True Things both rely on the interpersonal dynamics of the actors. Wilson’s portrayal of her character’s neediness opposite Burke’s passive and non-committal nature effectively complement one another. Where Only You honed its focus on a couple trying to manage the pressures of trying to conceive, True Things, with its relationship of convenience conveys, an alternative feel.
Aside from the colder and crueller affection the ex-prisoner shows Kate, it feels that the story creeps out of the crevices of a broken society. It’s a collective nightmare that conveys common experiences for people lost in an existential crisis, searching for purpose. Kate is a symbol of this despair, of being reduced to a replaceable cog in the machine, a person reduced to property or an asset.
Part of Kate’s dissatisfaction comes from the expectations around marriage, kids, and work. Reality, however, teaches us that these can be empty aspirations, and Kate has not satisfactorily checked a single box. Why would she be satisfied? Given little time for lunch, she eats a sandwich in the break room,while the threat of angry claimants lingers in the air. There’s little flexibility given for sickness or lateness. The focus in her workplace is on the individual’s productivity, never on whether the system works for the employee or its clients.
Intentional or not, Wootliff and Davies cannot escape the optics of this film being a critique of employment devaluing the individual who takes no purpose or achievement from their work. In the case of the benefits office, low-paid public sector employees are tasked with enforcing harsh and impractical governmental policies on the frontlines.
It appears to work, however, for Kate’s friend, who is married with kids. She goes through the motions, but the encounter with the ex-prisoner, who Kate lists as “Blond” in her phone contacts, stirs her self-destructive drive. Unable to prove her reliability at work after being flagged for not being punctual, her employment becomes less tenable.
Kate is an example of someone who has lost their sense of self. Her friend reminds her that she wants to settle down and have kids, so she shouldn’t let Blond mess her about like all the other men. One possible reason Kate wants what her friend has is because she has been programmed to want these things from a young age.
When she visits her parents, a topic of conversation is news that someone in the family is pregnant again – emphasizing Kate’s relationship- and child-less state. There comes a point in the story, however, when it becomes less about Kate fitting in than trying to find herself. Many in the audience will identify with that feeling of being on the fringe of society, feeling void of purpose or belonging, and how difficult it is to resolve that anxious despair.
In stories, wanting to change one’s life is enough to pull one’s self out of a bad situation. But in reality, we must have the means to do that. Storytelling is often a dream, the writer empowering their protagonist, but in real life our power as the author of our fate is limited. The crux of True Things is whether Kate can climb out of the rabbit hole to empower herself and find purpose and belonging.
The burgeoning relationship between the government-employed “cog in the wheel” and the ex-prisoner at the mercy of the government is an ideal setup for this type of story. It gives Kate the choice to either seek self-validation and acceptance through another person’s love, or to find strength within herself.
Wootliff and Davies present a snapshot of a journey that many will find familiar. True Things speaks about our capacity for poor decision-making and self-harm that precedes a moment of clarity, at which point one can begin to fixing their broken self. The broader point of the film is that the protagonist must stabilise her downward spiral. It’s a metaphor for a nation that must first acknowledge its inadequacies before rebuilding.