After shooting was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, True Things, starring Ruth Wilson and Tom Burke, has wrapped production. Here’s a first look at the film ahead of its release.
Shot over six weeks in Ramsgate, Kent and Malaga, Spain, True Things is director Harry Wootliff’s second feature after 2018’s Only You.
It is an adaptation of the book True Things About Me by Deborah Kay Davies, where the protagonist Kate (Ruth Wilson) has a casual sexual encounter with a stranger (Tom Burke). Their relationship devolves into “an intoxicating car crash.”
As we know, Wilson does this kind of romantic drama well. In His Dark Materials she plays Mrs Coulter, the terrifying antagonist at the centre of the overarching conspiracy, interlocked in an ever-changing, sexually charged relationship with Lord Asriel. In Hedda Gabler at the National Theatre in 2016, Wilson played a formidable Hedda opposite Rafe Spall as Judge Brack, proving once again that she is the queen of palpable sexual tension.
When describing the story, Wootliff said that “this kind of relationship feels all-consuming at the time. Later we can look back with a clarity that was beyond us at the time. It is almost a rite of passage. True Things subverts the idea that we are only complete once we find romantic love.”
Wilson, who is also one of the producers of the project, described True Things as a “painfully funny, perceptive and brutally honest portrayal of a woman struggling to find her own voice in a sea of expectations. True Things is as I always hoped it would be, a story told through a truly feminine lens.”
Starring opposite her, Tom Burke is well known for his starring role in 2019’s The Souvenir. He will take on the formidable role of Orson Welles in David Fincher’s upcoming bopic Mank.
Here’s to hoping that True Things won’t be caught up the many postponements films have been facing during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Words by Maddy Raven
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