‘Tender Loving Care’ San Sebastian Review: Mike Leigh Bids a Clear-Eyed Farewell With This Quietly Devastating Portrait Of Human Decency

The veteran status of many filmmakers tends to come paired with simplicity. Mike Leigh is no exception. The English director behind Secrets & Lies finds in the world and characters of Tender Loving Care a space of warmth, understanding and humanity that works as a balm — a sad one, but ultimately hopeful — for the times we’re living through. The fact that this film, already announced as the last of his career, closes on a shot of a man who looks a great deal like the director himself, staring straight into the camera with an apparently angry expression, doesn’t contradict that idea. Quite the opposite: it feels like an attempt to make sure that world doesn’t vanish entirely — the «security guard» trying to preserve it from the crows circling on every side.

Tender Loving Care is a film about care and protection in the broadest, most generous sense of those words: a small drama about two friends — both social workers — who move back in together after a long time apart, while each deals with, respectively, romantic troubles and family matters. Rosie (Alice Bailey Johnson) handles hospital patients and neighbors who don’t always make things easy for her, yet she seems perpetually willing to listen to them and tend to them, even when they subject her to humiliations. With her friend Amy (Kate O’Flynn, the acclaimed breakout actress from Widow’s Bay) she shares not only a profession but also the anguish of watching the state’s resources fall further short of what people actually need.

Still, they’re happy to be living together again, in Rosie’s house, even though the arrangement is a consequence of Amy’s separation. There, in that warm living room, the two of them talk, dance, sing and drink plenty of white wine while filling each other in on their respective professional and personal troubles. But they don’t let the complaints or the suffering get the better of them. Rosie is fairly excited about a new romance — with a fireman — while Amy is now spending more time with her parents, two lovely octogenarians who adore her (and her friend too, for that matter) and welcome her with open arms every time she visits. Or every time they visit, rather.

Much of the film unfolds across these encounters: between the two women, between Amy and her parents Birdie (Marion Bailey) and Geoff (Paul Jesson), or all three together. Nostalgic conversations recalling old anecdotes, everyday stories, simple jokes and the occasional lament blend together with the more clearly dramatic situations the two women confront in their jobs, dealing with people or families going through hard times. Always with a smile, Amy and Rosie move through life offering exactly the kind of «tender loving care» the title promises. And when things suddenly take a turn for the worse, that empathy, warmth and selfless devotion only becomes more visible.

The director of Naked and Vera Drake is eloquent in his theme and perhaps even flat in his visual approach. He has no interest in anything that might knock the viewer off balance — no unexpected narrative twists, no inessential subplots. The film’s only real concern, beyond observing the often rough-edged way the two women try to help others — mistakes and all — is showing a compassion that turns into ideology: a generosity and warmth that, as Amy’s equally loving parents point out, used to be common currency in the postwar years and began disappearing from the map once Margaret Thatcher came to power. «It’s worse now than it’s ever been,» say the old folks who lived through every stage of it.

From broken families and abandoned children to people confronting illness, what the four essential protagonists of Tender Loving Care demonstrate is that, even though another kind of spirit seems to prevail in the world today, something like a core of humanity, respect and care for others still exists. For these simple, noble people, the priority will always be the wellbeing of the person next to them — whether that means tending to them through illness, consoling them after a bad date, or simply sharing in some everyday pleasure like humming an old song or retelling a joke heard a thousand times before. If everything can change for the worse at the moment you least expect it, the best thing is to have someone by your side who’s willing and able to look after others. The people close to you — but strangers too.