Tender Loving Care Special Presentations
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About
Best friends and fellow social workers Amy (Kate O’Flynn) and Rosie (Alice Bailey Johnson) work amidst public crises and a lack of institutional support. Alienated from her own family, Rosie is something like a stepdaughter to Amy’s parents, Birdie (Marion Bailey) and Geoff (Paul Jesson), who round out the foursome at the heart of Tender Loving Care. Surrounded by a rich periphery of lives and struggles, Amy and Rosie approach the dangerous, difficult work of caring for the dispossessed with all the strength they have.
As usual, writer-director Mike Leigh doesn’t plot an arc so much as he constructs lively, provocative vignettes. Some of them are funny, some tragic, and many balance the two. Every performance in the film is superb and infused with the realism Leigh is famous for. Compassionate, keenly perceptive, and graced with a hard-won wisdom, this is a film about struggle and perseverance.
As usual, writer-director Mike Leigh doesn’t plot an arc so much as he constructs lively, provocative vignettes. Some of them are funny, some tragic, and many balance the two. Every performance in the film is superb and infused with the realism Leigh is famous for. Compassionate, keenly perceptive, and graced with a hard-won wisdom, this is a film about struggle and perseverance.
