SORRY WE MISSED YOU MAST D: Ken Loach. UK/France/Belgium. 102 min. Sep 12, 6 pm, Scotiabank 1 Sep 15, 12:30 pm, Scotiabank 1. Rating: NN
Loach follows 2016’s I, Daniel Blake with another miserablist drama. This one is about working-class parents (Kris Hitchen, Debbie Honeywood) in Newcastle-upon-Tyne being eaten alive by the gig economy – he as a subcontractor for a delivery company, she as a carer for elderly people living on their own. Their workloads increase personal time diminishes their children suffer.
Loach and his regular screenwriter Paul Laverty work their usual avenue of simmering outrage at the exploitation of hand-to-mouth families, but over the last decade their movies have developed a certain cruel shorthand of cascading misfortunes, without any of the warmth that gave Loach’s earlier work (Raining Stones, Riff-Raff) its complicated humanity.
