Dangerous liaison
RUTH WILSON STARS AS A LONELY OFFICE WORKER WHO EMBARKS ON A TOXIC FLING WITH TOM BURKE’S EX-CON IN TRUE THINGS. ABI JACKSON AND GEMMA DUNN FIND OUT MORE
WE’RE used to seeing actor Ruth Wilson play complex women on screen.
There was her Golden Globewinning turn as waitress Alison in US hit The Affair, the psychopathic Alice in Luther and Mrs Coulter in His Dark Materials.
In her latest film Ruth plays Kate, an unhappy 30-something who becomes embroiled with an ex-con played by Strike and The Musketeers star Tom Burke.
“It’s a very honest depiction of that initial infatuation between two people, how it can take over your whole body – and then what happens when reality creeps in,” Ruth recently told Harper’s Bazaar.
“Harry [Harriet] Wootliff, the director, calls it the ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream Effect’ – when, in the early stages, you see something magical and brilliant in another person, but eventually the veil lifts and you realise... it’s a donkey.”
In the film, which Ruth also coproduces, Kate is 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 multi-storey car park 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-and-cold behaviour grows increasingly unpleasant.
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 Harry Wootliff says is “brilliant at shooting women”) and intimacy co-ordinator Ita O’Brien, who worked on Normal People, Sex Education and I May Destroy You.
Ita walked the stars through step by step, prompting them where to put their hands and where to look so everyone felt comfortable and not ‘over-objectified’.
“It was essential that the film was really subjective, that we’re always in Kate’s head, seeing things from her perspective, says Harry.
“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.
“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 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 Harry.
“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.”
“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,” adds the Yorkshire-born film-maker.
“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.”
True Things is based on the 2010 novel True Things About Me by Deborah Kay Davies.
Harry describes the relationship between Kate and Blond as “complex yet ordinary”.
“Ordinary because I think it’s really commonplace, everybody’s had this kind of experience, and complex because it’s really subtle.
“Because it’s not one person falling for the other person and the other person gaslighting. It’s not that simple,” she explains. “Is she the one motivating it? Is he the one motivating it?
“Is he in love with her, is she in love with him? Is she always noble in her desire for him?
“Ostensibly, he seems like the bad one, definitely he is, but she’s also got her role to play 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 Harry.
“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.”
Harry did the same thing with 2018’s Only You, her dazzling debut feature film, which centred on a young couple moving from the magic of whirlwind romance to the soul-fracturing maze of infertility.
As well as rave reviews, it won her a BIFA (British Independent Film Award) 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, Harry co-wrote the script with Molly Davies, after Jude Law’s production company Riff Raff and Ruth’s Lady Lazarus initially got the project off the ground.
Harry says Ruth plays the lead role masterfully.
“She is very good at illusiveness,” she says. “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...”
True Things is in cinemas now
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
Director Harry Wootliff on Ruth Wilson’s character Kate