Writer and Director: Mike Leigh
Everyone’s “fine” in Mike Leigh’s new drama Tender Loving Care screening at the BFI London Film Festival, although of course they’re not, it’s just the typically British response to that question, and as the story unfolds everyone is really not fine at all, they just carry on. Focusing on two social workers dealing with their cases as well as the complexities of their real lives, Leigh’s latest film is interested in ageing and the assumptions made about the role of social workers, the aggression they face and the limitations on the support they can provide.
Leaving her apparently unpleasant boyfriend, Amy moves back in with her friend Rosie, both social workers who spend their evenings drinking wine together and off-loading about their troubles both personal and professional. Spending time with Amy’s older parents, life trundles on until her father starts to ail and, knowing what’s coming, they rally round her mother Birdie.
Leigh has produced another social-realist documentary-style film in which he takes a slice of life with all its positive moments and unfolding troubles. Always very human and compassionate, Leigh creates a strong family scenario, a close group of people who support each other and share in the various burdens of day-to-day life. And in his trademark dialogue, Leigh’s characters move between work-based discussions and their personal life, an ongoing unfolding conversation that continually scoops up the next activity, the next experience without ceremony.
The focus here is the varied and pressured nature of social work, the different kinds of cases that Amy and Rosie see everyday with the writer-director includes snippets of these within the overarching story to show both their professionalism and the system in which they operate. Amy in particular is adept at drawing out emotional connections and confidences from the young people she works with, and in difficult circumstances offers positive support. Rosie’s cases tend to include abuse or people not interested in her help, but the women absorb it all and persist.
Their release is alcohol and while Leigh doesn’t explicitly draw attention to it, there are many many scenes of Amy and Rosie drinking wine together, copious amounts which they glug down in their flat most evenings. None of their interactions is completed without a drink – or many drinks – of some kind. Everything they go through is worthy of a drink, Amy’s breakup, Rosie’s impending dates, their caseload and Amy’s struggle to be honest with her parents. All of it masking the deeper pain they carry without ever addressing it – the alcohol equivalent of being ‘fine.’
There are strong performances from the ensemble cast Kate O’Flynn as the kind Amy, Alice Bailey Johnson as Rosie, both hiding more gregarious personalities behind officialdom, Marion Bailey as Amy’s mother Birdie and Paul Jesson as her ailing father Geoff. All alone in their own ways, a women-focused story about coping.
As ever in Leigh’s film the problems are presented without solutions, scenarios tail off and nothing is concluded which can be dramatically frustrating, but Tender Loving Care is another story of communities of caregivers all making their way through as best they can.
Tender Loving Care is screening at the BFI London Film Festival 2026 from 7-18 October.
