Tender Loving Care

Leigh shows us a world without cynicism, without malice, a world in which people do care, but in which they have a lot to care about. There is a lot of unhappiness here, an ocean of sadness which almost, but not quite, capsizes the boat – yet the mood, underscored by Gary Yershon’s music, is more ruminative than melancholy.

With its tragicomic center and its unwavering compassion, if Tender Loving Care is indeed Mike Leigh’s final film, it’s a beautiful note to end on.

As great as anything he’s ever produced—a small-scale domestic drama that reverberates loudly, and urgently, as a celebration of everyday compassion and solidarity.

The movie is warm and inviting, filled with giggles and gossip and gentle gallows humor; it’s also wrenching, with a topical urgency simmering just beneath the jovial surface.

The result is one of his most formidable stories in spite of its scope; spartan and straightforward, absent plot complication but awash in pointillistic detail, this so-called swan song collects its attention into a bracingly humane look at conflicting networks of care. It exalts in what love and tenderness can do for a person, and just as honestly pays heed to what they can’t.

One of Mike Leigh’s preoccupations in Tender Loving Care is with what is and isn’t shown on screen, and by extension with which moments of life are really worth focusing on.

Leigh doesn’t make any wrong moves here; just about every scene in the movie plays. Yet Tender Loving Care builds (or maybe I should say recedes) to something more schematic than it is powerful.