Sorry We Missed You
Sorry We Missed You
Cast: Kris Hitchen, Debbie Honeywood Director: Ken Loach Duration: 1 h 41 m
It’s a complaint I’ve heard from several quarters, not least in my own head; consumers conflicted by the cheapness and convenience of online shopping, but troubled by reports of poor labour practices at Amazon and elsewhere. I’ve often wished there was at the least a don’t- knock- yourself- out delivery option.
If you’re in a similar state then sorry, but Sorry We Missed You won’t be an easy watch. But it’s a great film with a powerful message and more sympathy for its characters than any three socially conscious movies you’d care to mention.
British filmmaking team Ken Loach ( director) and Paul Laverty (writer) have been here before, most recently with 2016’s I, Daniel Blake, which won the Palme d’or at Cannes that year. Sorry We Missed You was a nominee last year but lost out to Parasite, a very different story of economic inequality. This one is far more real, far less funny.
Kris Hitchen and Debbie Honeywood star as Ricky and Abbie, a salt- of- theearth couple from Newcastle upon Tyne in the north of England. They’re living paycheque to paycheque in a rented house with their two children, teenage Seb ( Rhys Stone) and Liza Jae ( Katie Proctor), who looks to be about 12.
Ricky thinks he’s hit on a solution to their problems with a new job as a delivery driver. His new boss — well, as he tells Ricky, he’s not the boss. “You don’t get hired; you come on board,” he says. “There’s no wages, but fees. No clocking on; you become available. You’re an owner-driver franchisee.”
Right. Welcome to the gig economy, Ricky. But the first problem is that the delivery van costs money, so they sell the family car, and Abbie starts taking public transit to her clients; she’s a homecare nurse. But she still has two children to look after, which means a lot of phone calls from the road. You know how some people work from home? She homes from work.
Meanwhile, Ricky discovers that the delivery gig only works if everything about it goes perfectly — and the universe isn’t like that. Parking tickets, not-at-home customers, hard- to- find addresses, aggressive dogs, people who don’t sign legibly or lack the proper ID — the list is almost endless. And once you fall behind, good luck catching up. At some point it becomes mathematically impossible.
Loach is no sadist, but watch as he slowly tightens the screws on Ricky and Abbie. The cliché of movie- going is that it’s like a roller-coaster ride. Sorry We Missed You fits that mould, except in this case the drop lasts for the entire ride, and you’re not sure when or if or how it’s ever going to end. Hang on and take the trip anyway; it’s a vital story for our times. ΠΠΠΠ1/2