Mike Leigh’s ‘Tender Loving Care’ reviewed at Telluride as a possible final film

Telluride film festivalAlice Bailey Johnson and Kate O’Flynn lead a complicated, quietly heartbreaking drama about friendship, ageing parents and the sadness of lives moving inexorably onMike Leigh’s new film – perhaps his last – is a poignant, intergenerational drama of happy-sad acceptance that life goes on, until it doesn’t go on. And then you have to come to terms with the mortality of your elderly parents and by that same token, with the end that is waiting for you too. The decency and clarity of the film are a tonic. It is a movie with one of Leigh’s overtly positive and even sugary titles, like Life Is Sweet (1990) or Happy-Go-Lucky (2008), as distinct from his darker ones: Secrets & Lies (1996) or Hard Truths (2024). But his sweet titles are not simply satirical and intended to mean the opposite: it is more complicated and elusive, and even the contrast here between the two heroines’ private and professional lives isn’t straightforwardly a matter of irony.As so often, the dialogue has that unique Leigh cartoonish quality that isn’t caricature, and the characters often speak with an almost wartime chirpiness in a world of peckers kept up and noses kept clean. This is a perkiness that the thirtysomethings have unexpectedly inherited and modified from their old mum and dad, and Leigh leaves it to the audience to judge the consequent tone of the drama and the appropriate tone of their response. Continue reading...

A drama about a week in the life of two social workers, Leigh's supposed swan song pierces with the directness of a closing statement.

There has been much talk in film circles that the great Mike Leigh’s latest film, Tender Loving Care, might be his last. Health issues, general aging and other things can get in the way for all of us, but if this turns out to be his finale, at least in terms of feature films — […]