Powerful stories of troubled young women facing some kinds of crisis are not new, though not exactly common either. Carine Adler’s 1997 Under the Skin (not to be confused with the later Jonathan Glazer film of the same name) and Lynne Ramsay’s 2002 Morvern Callar spring immediately to mind, as does the recent French film Full Time. Now comes another example in the form of the British psychological drama True Things.  

Adapted from the novel True Things About Me by Deborah Kay Davies, the film depicts the odyssey of a troubled young woman in a seaside town. It’s one of those rare films that are riveting to watch and yet almost impossible to describe without, unfairly, making it sound like a downer.

True Things

Ruth Wilson and Tom Burke in True Things. Photo supplied

While it’s not exactly light entertainment, a wrist-slasher it is decidedly not. UK director Harry Wootliff has avoided the awaiting pitfalls by evoking huge amounts of empathy for her lonely yet flawed central character, Kate. She is played by Ruth Wilson with such a mixture of intensity, longing and heart-breaking vulnerability that viewers can feel for her even...