SLIFF 2019 Review – SORRY WE MISSED YOU

SORRY WE MISSED YOU will screen at The Tivoli Theater (6350 Delmar) Thursday, Nov 14 at 7:10pm as part of this year’s St. Louis International Film Festival. Ticket information can be found HERE

Ken Loach (“I, Daniel Blake,” “The Wind That Shakes the Barley”) again empathically explores the British working class in “Sorry We Missed You,” a wrenching, intimate family drama that exposes the dark side of the so-called gig economy. Former laborer Ricky and home-attendant wife Abby — who lost their home in the 2008 financial crash — are desperate to get out of their financial distress. When an opportunity arises for Ricky to work as his own boss as a delivery driver, they sell their only asset, Abby’s car, trading it in for a shiny new white van. But the couple find their lives are only pushed further to the edge by an unrelenting work schedule, a ruthless supervisor, and the needs of their two teenage children. The Guardian writes: “Director Ken Loach and screenwriter Paul Laverty have come storming back to Cannes with another tactlessly passionate bulletin from the heart of modern Britain, a film in the tradition of Loach’s previous work and reaching back to Vittorio De Sica’s ‘Bicycle Thieves.’ It’s fierce, open and angry, unironised and unadorned, about a vital contemporary issue whose implications you somehow don’t hear on the news.”

Review by Stephen Tronicek

When I first saw Sorry We Missed You, the new film from Ken Loach, I wrote on Twitter that I figured he’s stop making the same movie if the world had changed. It’s become a bit of a taunting phrase to say that Loach has only made films focused on the horrors of late capitalism as experienced by the British lower class, but I think those comments ignores the  question as to why? He wouldn’t stop doing this if the world stopped hurting people. 

    Alas, Sorry We Missed You follows a lower class family as the father becomes a delivery driver for a shipping conglomerate. What results is the disillusion of the family and one of the most satisfyingly nihilistic final shots of the past few years. 

    What makes Sorry We Missed You satisfying is the grasp Loach and his actors have on the archetypes he’s been working in for years. As blunt and melodramatic as the script often is, Sorry We Missed You is directed with the strict eye of a dramatist in control of his craft and skillfully performed by actors incredibly lived in with each other. It’s a really family going through real times. 

    Speaking of craft, the look and display of Sorry We Missed You is the work of a filmmaker who has reinforced his style for years. It’s a beautiful looking film, shot starkly on 16mm that renders the piercing white light, gray walls, and reddish brown highlights in carefully considered framing. Even if you disregard (or dismissed) the trappings of the story, it’d be impossible to deny how rich the setting reads on screen.     Ken Loach’s Sorry We Missed You is one of the best and most important films of the year. As familiar as the territory may be for the veteren Loach, he sure is awfully good at navigating it.