Tender Loving Care

fran hoepfner5.0

Literal swan song

davidehrlich4.0

Said to be Mike Leigh’s final film, the simple but profoundly affecting “Tender Loving Care” confronts the dominant theme of his career — the practice and value of communal support in the face of an unforgiving world — with the directness of a closing statement. Here, in an exquisitely rendered micro-portrait about a week in the lives of two sparkling London social workers, Leigh gets right to the heart of the matter. The result is one of his most formidable stories in spite of its scope; spartan and straightforward, absent plot complication but awash in pointillistic detail, this so-called swan song collects its attention into a bracingly humane look at conflicting networks of care. It exalts in what love and tenderness can do for a person, and just as honestly pays heed to what they can’t. Rosie (played by Leigh favorite Alice Bailey Johnson) has made a certain kind of peace with those limitations, even if that peace is more tenuous than she might care to admit. A battle-tested social worker whose name reflects her cheerful bedside manner, she practically beams through the sober first scene of the film — a hospital check-in on an unhoused and non-verbal drifter who’s just suffered a mild heart attack. Rosie clocks the man’s vacant stare, and knows full well that the social safety net isn’t at all strong enough to hold his weight, but she offers him every bit of the compassion he deserves. Sometimes, that’s all the government will allow her to give. It’s not enough, but it isn’t nothing either. Not the way Rosie doles it out. In return for her compassion, Rosie is (self) rewarded with a huge glass of wine in her flat at the end of the day. She doesn’t really like the fireman she’s been seeing (the big third date is scheduled for the upcoming weekend), but at least that’s something to look forward to. More promising for Rosie, at least in the short term, is that her greatest source of strength and comfort — her life-long BFF Amy, 40 years old with so much love to give — has moved back in with her after being dumped by her dodgy boyfriend of the last half-decade. Luminously possessed by “Widow’s Bay” star Kate O’Flynn, whose sweetly pained smile of a performance evokes a less pathological take on the joy that Sally Hawkins brought to “Happy-Go-Lucky,” Amy is so upbeat that she almost makes Rosie seem like Eeyore by comparison. They drink in their sweatpants, they dance around the apartment, they call each other sexy bitches. Most of all, they make it viscerally clear that they are and always have been there for each other; no one, save perhaps Mike Leigh himself, better understands how far that kind of backing can go, and how devastating it can be to live without it. ~this review continues on IndieWire~

Brandon Streussnig

A filmmaker looking at the end of a life, a career, and maybe even the world as we once knew it, and still finding something to hold onto. What this turns into from where it begins is so lovely and crushing, I was basically crying for the entire back half. Remarkable balance of tone, but hey, it always is with Leigh. It's often bleak out there, but I hope to keep finding those "Christmases" where I can.