'Sorry We Missed You' (& Made You Weep Like a Baby)

Jesus F. Christ. I don’t know if this is a Ken Loach *thing*, but as far as socio-political commentary film tactics go, I’d say shaking you to your core then sticking you with the shortest end credits in the history of cinema — so that you absolutely cannot recover, and also fuck you — is fairly effective. I… Yeah, I mean it works. Not that I’m going to do it, but I’ve definitely considered cancelling my Amazon Prime subscription over Sorry We Missed You. Or at the very least begun to conjecture what a world would look like where I couldn’t order pink boxing gloves and essential oil diffusers for next-day delivery. The answer is: probably a whole lot better, to be honest. Like, maybe more people would be able to — oh, I don’t know — take a piss on the job and, like, feed their families.

BBC Films

Anyway, deep breaths. Sorry We Missed You tells the story of a family of four in Newcastle, who are hit hard by austerity. It starts when dad Ricky (Kris Hitchen) becomes “self-employed” as a delivery driver, working long hours to pay off debt and eventually buy a house. Mum Abbie (Debbie Honeywood) works as a carer, ferrying from house to house for 12 or 14 hours a day to scramble eggs and wipe faeces. Meanwhile, daughter Lisa Jane (Katie Proctor) struggles with insomnia, and son Seb (Rhys Stone) skips school with his friends to make (very good) graffiti with sometimes shoplifted paint cans. Spread increasingly thin, the typically strong family unit threatens to snap, again and again and again.

The acting is so good it barely reads like acting at all, so you may be a spectator, but you might as well be getting yelled at by a dystopic capitalist boss yourself, or having the food you prepared chucked on the floor. In short, if you’re looking for escapism, this ain’t it, fam. The film is pretty difficult to watch, as it keeps getting worse every time you think it can’t possibly, as you feel so viscerally for every member of the family that you feel almost guilty for your voyeurism. Someone told me the other day that they found Loach’s work almost too political, but that’s the point, isn’t it? Sure, Sorry We Missed You is worst-case scenario and fairly one-sided, but isn’t that how it feels when the system is consistently stacked against you? Sometimes fiction is the closest we can get to understanding a situation, and perhaps eventually doing something about it. (Oh, and in case you’re interested, I’m voting Labour.)

10/10