For a film “most likely” to be his swan song due to the challenges thrown by a chronic muscular ailment, 83-year-old British auteur Mike Leigh’s Tender Loving Care is an elegant high point to hang his boots on. A mellow culmination for a body of work committed to exploring ordinary people and their extraordinarily resilient lives.
Leigh’s perennial engagement with the issues facing the working class is the stuff that cinema legends are made of. In Tender Loving Care he narrows his focus down to the social service workers, their personal friendships, families and relationships and the tough professional situations they must keep braving day after day. The film is playing at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) after its world premiere in Telluride.
Who would provide therapy to a therapist? The question looms large as Amy (Kate O'Flynn) and her best friend Rosie (Alice Bailey Johnson), both social workers, patiently live through the troubled lives of others and look for options to help others find ways out of their misfortunes. In the process, they often reach close to a breakdown themselves faced with persistent insomnia and stress.
Their personal lives are in no great shape, with Amy breaking off a relationship and moving in back with Rosie who, in turn, is in search of an elusive commitment with the right man. The reality of the frail world of her aging parents Birdie (Marion Bailey) and Geoff (Paul Jesson), dawns on Amy with Geoff beginning to steadily slip into dementia.
The film is like a summation of the quotidian, built around a series of long, unfussy conversations—happy, sad and bittersweet—with a simple and reiterated musical interlude separating them. Beyond the personal predicaments, these discussions underscore the political, social and economic impasse in Britain. The lack of funding for mental health, and inadequate social security net, among several others.
Tender Loving Care might be about desolate times and the cruel unpredictability of life but the narrative doesn’t get bogged down by the enormity of these heavy moments. Leigh keeps it straight, simple and subtle. He builds and establishes his characters and their associations with a great depth of vision and emotional acuity. His observational approach offers them space to grow and then breaks the wall by framing them with a caring and compassionate intimacy.
Kate O’Flynn is enormously admirable as Amy in her empathy and patience with her cases, yet moving in her own vulnerability and confrontation of personal pain. Alice Bailey Johnson makes a perfect bright and vivacious foil with her energy, charm and wit. Marion Bailey and Paul Jesson, as the jovial parents, leave one smiling with their utterly unaffected ways and off the cuff wisdom.
The four actors together make things lived in and real with their easy chatter, banter and irresistible humour. They bring a distinct heartwarming energy to the film, especially in a standout, memorable sequence of singing a beloved song in unison. Then there's another of Kate and Alice drinking and dancing with utter abandon in their own living room.
The brush with mortality and reconciling with loss and grief in seeing someone close steadily shut down and eventually understanding and accepting that the waiting game has begun holds a mirror to the continuities, the circle of life. Instead of falling into mawkishness or morbidity, Tender Loving Care makes for a profound lesson on life with its easy-going, light touch. It mines the meaningful in the mundane and the philosophical in the prosaic and lives up to its name with its portrayal of a humane slice of community and solidarity. A film with tremendous grace.