I love stories that give their female characters the space and compassion to be messy, stories that are unconcerned if, on paper, they’re flirting with the misogynist “crazy woman” stereotype. “Anna Karenina,” “The Deep Blue Sea,” “Young Adult,” “Celeste and Jesse Forever,” “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” of course — they’re all very much my bag. So is “True Things,” rising filmmaker Harry Wootliff’s adaptation of the Deborah Kay Davies novel “True Things About Me.”
Starring and produced by Ruth Wilson, this bad romance begins when a bored, lonely benefits office worker, Kate (Wilson), has an unexpected parking garage tryst with a claimant (Tom Burke), whom she saves in her phone as “Blond.” From the jump, we understand why this experience is so momentous for Kate — she feels awake, excited, sexy, for the first time in a long time — while recognizing that it’s also basically the start of a slow-motion train wreck.
A tragic combination of needy and giving, Kate is so emotionally open she has no way to protect herself from getting hurt — if that’s something she even wants at all. She’s starved for connection, so much so she idealizes a guy who, at best, can offer her nothing but occasional fun hook-ups. But the more Blond runs hot and cold, the more fixated Kate becomes. There is a genuine spark between this toxic couple; unfortunately for Kate, it’s not one that can be sustained, at least not as the swooning love story she’s longing for.
The truly remarkable thing is, thanks to Wilson and Burke’s bruising performances, the viewer actually roots for Kate and Blond as a couple. Against my better judgement, my spirits lifted when Kate found Blond on her doorstep when returning home from a disastrous blind date. I, too, was elated when he texted her back, and hoped his gaslighting and unreliability were just misunderstandings. Wilson’s go-for-broke turn, and the palpable chemistry she shares with Burke, means we’re just as invested in this quasi-relationship as Kate. We’re riding the emotional rollercoaster right beside her.
If you’re skeptical of a film about a woman coming undone due, at least in part, to a shitty man, I can’t blame you. Women are too often defined by their relationships to men, on-screen and in real life. All I can say is that Wootliff and her co-screenwriter, Molly Davies, are more interested in the complexities and contradictions of desire, how it can collide with social norms and mental health, than in delivering a portrait of a woman who has it all figured out. “True Things” isn’t pretty, but as its title promises, it’s not in the habit of just telling the audience what they want to hear, either.
“True Things” is now in theaters and available on VOD.
