True Things spins such a familiar tale that its success rides on how convincingly a mood is conjured. It needs to be so raw that the predictable is rewritten anew in the specific chemistry of these characters. Instead, it is, for the most part, a mood piece drained of mood
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Wootliff cuts away everything other than the raw nerves that are left exposed, creating a film more elemental than narrative.
Screen Daily by Fionnuala Halligan
All in all, it’s the strength of vision which impresses — the confidence and the brio of a film-maker adapting a novel and losing herself inside it, making no apologies for her interpretation.
Harry Wootliff’s jaggedly grown-up psychological drama True Things thrives on the hot, tense chemistry between its two excellent leads: It’s what pulls the audience through an obstacle course of potentially implausible scenarios that instead ring stingingly true.
The Film Stage by Jared Mobarak
Adapting a book by Deborah Kay Davies, director Harry Wootliff and her co-writer Molly Davies bring True Things to life as a quasi-reaction to Instagram captions generally painting a much sunnier picture than reality could ever prove.
The Hollywood Reporter by Lovia Gyarkye
Although the film handles the process of being subsumed by love well, the characters ultimately feel too thin to make Kate’s awakening persuasive.
The ending offers only a slightly clichéd vision of emancipation that leaves the picture not much clearer. After showing how hard life can be, it feels a little bit too easy.
True Things is not a bad film, exactly. The actors play it like they mean it, while the drama itself carries a natural dry charge. But it’s unambitious, sometimes clunky and doesn’t wrong-foot us once.