True Things (2021) Looking for Love in all the Wrong Places (Blu-ray Review)

Director Harry Wootliff’s new film, released to Blu-ray this week by Picturehouse Entertainment is True Things, an adaptation of the acclaimed 2010 novel by Deborah Kay Davies, True Things About Me. It stars Ruth Wilson (who is also on producing duties with fellow thesp Jude Law) and Tom Burke and is a compelling mood piece about the fine line between erotic obsession and psychological self-harm.

Set on the Kent coast, True Things centres on the story of Kate (Wilson), a complex young woman who seems to be sleepwalking her way through a stultifying existence that comprises her dead-end, gruelling job as an employment advisor within the DWP and a wholly empty personal life. Perilously adrift on this sea of unfulfillment, an encounter with Burke’s enigmatic claimant (referred to throughout the film as ‘Blond’; the name Kate gives to him on her mobile, denoting his dye-job), freshly out of gaol, suggests the thrill she has been looking for. A brief moment of passion in the car park after work sends Kate on a riptide of reckless exhilaration and all-consuming infatuation. They continue to meet, but the committed relationship Kate seems to be looking for proves elusive as Blond proves singularly unreliable. Rather than heed the warning signs, Kate is propelled further toward this dangerously attractive new man, telling her eminently patient friend and co-worker Alison (Hayley Squires) and her equally long-suffering parents (Elizabeth Rider and Frank McCusker) that he’s had a hard time but she’s helping him on his feet. Of course, this is a story that Kate is essentially telling herself, as Blond remains guarded and mysterious – the man who wasn’t there with no real understanding of the love and honest intimacy that Kate so clearly craves from him. Ups and downs ensue as the white-hot flames of passion burn and fade, only to splutter back into life once more. With this beguiling new connection becoming an addiction, Kate seems in over her head until a final act which sees the pair head out to Spain for Blond’s sister’s wedding.

We’re currently in a period, arguably post #MeToo, where cinema is becoming keener to tell stories driven by females and blessed with more accurate and authentic portrayals of women. It’s therefore rather interesting to see a character as complex as Kate in True Things – a character who, on the surface at least, seems like a subservient and passive character in comparison to Blond’s shot-caller, in that she is constantly pursuing his attention and sexual interest. But delve a little deeper and Kate doesn’t seem as passive as she may initially appear. Rather than being at Blond’s beck and call, it could be interpreted that she is the driving force of their connection, purposefully engaging in that relationship despite the risks to her emotional wellbeing or sense of self, and indeed self-worth. There’s a moment in that erotically-charged car park scene that led me to wonder if Kate is somehow fated to re-enact some previous abuse, one that she has come to learn will only deliver the sexual fulfilment she desires.

Whilst Wootliff’s film does not explore Kate’s past or outline anything in explicit terms, it may explain the seemingly conflicting qualities inherent in her character. Having tasted the reckless sexual abandon and daring unpredictability offered by Blond, a later scene in which Kate attends a blind date (organised by the determinedly helpful Alison, of course) with new-in-town Rob (Tom Weston-Jones) ends in disaster. The Sheffield singleton may be attractive, but we discover with toe-curling, hands-over-the-eyes embarrassment that he lacks the impulsive nature that Kate so clearly craves for her own satisfaction.

Several critics have remarked that the film’s final act feels implausible and rushed and that it delivers a change in Kate’s attitude that appears too swiftly. Viewing the film in the context of Kate being in the driver’s seat, I’m inclined to be more sympathetic to how the film concludes. There’s an intriguing argument that Kate has constructed this story about Blond, the one that she shared with her family and friends, about him needing help, because she actually wants it to be true. Indeed, there are moments in the film in which we find ourselves wondering if this isn’t the extent of Kate’s invention; is Blond so perpetually ambiguous and elusive – he doesn’t even have a name! – because he’s just a construct? There’s a scene after the disastrous date with Rob where Blond just appears at Kate’s doorstep, lifting her spirits and taking her to a party where she confides to him about her childhood imaginary friend.

Thankfully, whilst the film never takes this step into the truly fantastical, it is arguably only when Kate actually sees him outside of their usual circumstances, on holiday with his own family and friends (who Wootcliff chooses to keep on the periphery of the screen, as wholly elusive and out of reach as Blond has so previously appeared) that she realises the extent of the fiction she has created. Blond doesn’t need help, he’s just a careless and selfish unreconstructed male who enjoys the thought of ‘sex on tap’. When he starts to raise the subject of domesticity for himself, Kate wakes up to reality and sees a man who does not have the same understanding or appreciation of love and relationships as her own. She has tried to be the person she thinks Blond needs, as opposed to being herself, and it can be argued that it is that which has shaped the imbalance in their relationship. Like all of us, Kate is a complicated, complex person who is making the error of attempting to be something specific to everyone, including herself, as opposed to just discovering who she really is and being that person unconditionally. She has been looking for love in all the wrong places, starting within herself.

I’m told that the original novel is more intense and more sexually explicit, detailing the dangerous obsessional levels that Kate succumbs to until she is used and abused at whim by the cavalier Blond. Whilst there’s an argument that that adaptation could be made, I’m glad that True Things isn’t it. True Things is an exploration of a complicated, toxic relationship for today, one that skilfully avoids a kind of misery porn, misogynist aesthetic. Wootliff and her cinematographer, Ashley Connor, deliver a distinctly feminine dreamscape of a film – with some memorable, striking imagery – told from Kate’s complex perspective. That said, there’s no soft soaping and it appears like the extensive development time (something like eight years in the making) has led to the rich melting pot of experiences from the major creatives both in front of and behind the camera, even if it has arguably hampered the believability of Wilson and Burke in central roles that feel as if they ought to be a decade younger than the stars actually are.

Mark on True Things (2021)