I do no want to put women in a bo
True Things directo Harry Wootliff: The British filmmaker tells ABI JACKSON and GEMMA DUNN about her new movie, starring Ruth Wilson as a lonely office worker whose life is flipped inside-out by a messy fling
HARRY Wootliff is not interested in women being neatly packaged into superficial stereotypes.
She wants to see all their layers explored, in all their complex, contradictory realness, free of judgment and apologies.
“I really want to show women having a broad range of emotions and not being put in a box. Not the ‘angel’ or the ‘slut’, or the ‘bad girl’ or the ‘good girl’ or the ‘stupid girl’, it can be everything,” says the Yorkshireborn filmmaker.
“Your actions can not always be true to who you are, you can behave out of character, you can make stupid decisions when you’re very clever.”
Kate, the lead character in Wootliff’s latest movie True Things, based on the 2010 novel True Things About Me by Deborah Kay Davies, certainly makes some unwise decisions.
We meet her as an unhappy 30-something, whose friends are settling down with families, while she’s still single and miserable in her job at a benefits office in Ramsgate, where she scrolls Instagram when the bosses are not looking and a supermarket sandwich is the highlight of the day.
The tedium is disrupted when Blond (the name Kate gives him on account of his bleached hair) comes in, a new claimant recently released from prison, who flirts with her then waits outside until she clocks off.
They have sex in a multistorey carpark and an intense fling ensues, during which Kate manages to row with her parents, distance from her friends and lose her job, while Blond’s manipulative, hot-andcold behaviour grows increasingly unpleasant.
It comes to a head when Kate accepts Blond’s invitation to a wedding in Spain, where she finally realises that is enough.
“Complex yet ordinary” is how Wootliff describes the relationship between the pair played by Ruth Wilson and T Burke.
“Ordinary because I think it’s really commonplace, everybody’s had this kind of experience, and complex beca it’s really subtle.
“Because it’s not one pers falling for the other person a the other person gaslighting. not that simple,” she explain “Is she the one motivatin “Is he the one motivating “Is he in love with her, is in love with him? Is she alwa noble in her desire for him?
“Ostensibly, he seems lik the bad one, definitely he is, she is also got her role to pla within the dynamic of the relationship.
“I probably realised that more as I made the film than when I embarked on it.”
These questions are arguably more important than the plot for Wootliff.
“We don’t just watch Kate make a series of ill-advised decisions, we witness the emotions that bleed through them, her aching loneliness, her yearning, her pleasure, her pain, with incredibly intimate camerawork and Wilson’s painstakingly real performance pulling us in deep.
Wootliff did the same thing with 2018’s Only You, her dazzling debut feature film, which centred on a young couple moving from the sizzling magic of whirlwind romance to the soul-fracturing maze of infertility.
As well as rave reviews, it won Wootliff a BIFA award for best debut director and a nomination for outstanding debut at the Baftas.
True Things is only her second feature, and completing it took longer than hoped due to
the pandemic. As well as directing, Wootliff co-wrote the script with Molly Davies, after Jude Law’s production company Riff Raff and Wilson’s Lady Lazarus (the actor also serves as a producer on the film) initially got the project off the ground.
Wootliff was determined to show us that Kate was not just being passively taken for a ride, something that became increasingly evident for her during the course of filming.
“What surprised [me] is her determination, that she’s on this path and she’s not a victim, she is determined, and the film has to drive through at all points that she wants to be with him.
“And when she doesn’t, the film is over, you’ve only got 10 minutes to go.
“Things do change for her, and she no longer wants to be with him.
“By then, she’s not there for him, she’s there for Spain.
“She’s worked out who she is and what she wants, and she wants to escape. “She doesn’t want him.” Wilson plays all this masterfully.
“She is very good at illusiveness,” Wootliff agrees of the film’s star.
“And what was fun in this role as well was really encouraging her to be playful and light, and a bit giggly and fun, which is very much part of who Ruth is, as well as being strong and smart and clever.
“I wanted also for us to see her vulnerability . . .
“I think we definitely embrace on screen the unravelling man as always being strong and cool, whereas the unravelling woman is then defined by her unravelling,” the director observes. “Hysterical and over-emotional”.
Getting the balance right with the sex scenes was important, and a big part of this was having a female-led team, which also included director of photography Ashley Connor (who Wootliff says is “brilliant at shooting women”) and intimacy co-ordinator Ita O’Brien, for help on choreographing and ensuring the process felt safe and respectful.
“It was essential that the film was really subjective, that we’re always in Kate’s head, seeing things from her perspective. We wanted the cinematography to feel very sensual and visceral… to really encapsulate this feeling that she’s in a waking dream or a waking nightmare,” says Wootliff.
“There’s very little nudity . . . I wanted it to feel like you’ve seen a quite sexy, sensual film, but actually you haven’t really seen very much naked flesh. That that was my aim.”
What we do see though, before everything begins to unravel, is Kate’s pleasure and desire at the beginning of the fling.
“This is a great thing for Kate, it’s fun, it’s an adventure, she’s being daring, she’s going out of her comfort zone, it’s exciting,” says Wootliff.
“We talked a lot, Ruth and I, about Kate’s sexuality and whether she was driven by love or sex, and it was definitely both.
“She’s not just looking for hearts and flowers. She’s also enjoying having sex with him, she wants to have sex with him again.
“It’s not a bad thing, it’s not a dark thing. It’s consented, and it’s OK for a woman to behave like that, not just a man.”
True Things is in cinemas now.