Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
Director: Ken Loach, Icon Film Distribution.
Cast: Kris Hitchen, Debbie Honeywood, Rhys Stone, Katie Proctor, Ross Brewster.
Sorry We Missed You is a disturbing slice of harsh reality. It is the story of Ricky Turner (Hitchen) and his family who have been fighting an uphill battle against debt since the financial crash of 2008.
English director Ken Loach, now 83 years of age, received the Palme d’Or for two films at the Cannes Film Festival. They were The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006) and I, Daniel Blake (2016).
Together with writer Paul Laverty, Loach delivers another well-meaning, intensely distressing study of the oppressed working classes. Loach’s approach is not always understated.
Ricky delivers packages of online purchases (mostly made in other countries). His wife Abbie (Honeywood) is a ‘carer’, a home health aide for the elderly and disabled.
He doesn’t have much professional experience and has not had much of an education, but he is duty-bound to purportedly become self-employed as a delivery driver, with the strict Maloney (Brewster) constantly on his back.
He gets a speech to make him feel more confident on how he must basically pay for everything and for him to be liable for it. Ricky has to convince Abbie that for him to purchase a van, she had to sell her car and catch buses instead.
There is the prospect now of them getting back some independence. The shiny new van gives him the chance to run a franchise as a self-employed delivery driver. The job is hard, and his wife’s role as a carer is not any less demanding.
Not only are they both weary, but enormously in debt. Added to that is the fact they are both forced to spend even less time with their teenage son, Seb (Rhys Stone) and young daughter, Liza Jae (Katie Proctor).
Seb, in particular, does not take kindly to their apparent neglect and gets into further trouble at school. That’s when Ricky becomes concerned, insisting that his son needs a good education to get ahead in life.
Even though the family unit is strong, being pulled in different directions gets to breaking point. The drama is powerful.
