Mike Leigh’s Uncompromising Farewell: ‘Tender Loving Care’ Caps a Legendary Career

At 83, Mike Leigh remains as uncompromising as ever. No one—not financiers, distributors, or even Netflix—dictates what his films are about. The director, who says Netflix could fund him “without batting an eyelid” but never has, is telling his story to prove his integrity.

At the Savoy Hotel in London, shortly after the 1997 Academy Awards, Harvey Weinstein visited Leigh in his room wearing a bathrobe, a young woman in tow. Weinstein offered a line Leigh has never forgotten: “I could have gotten you those Oscars.”

Leigh had come to discuss financing a project he was developing—“Topsy-Turvy,” a film about the 15 months preceding the 1885 premiere of Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera “The Mikado.” He was not there to rehash the evening when Miramax’s “The English Patient” won nine Oscars while his own “Secrets & Lies,” nominated for five, went home empty-handed. Back when Weinstein dominated independent cinema, the most powerful man in the business boasted that his awards apparatus could have delivered the statuettes. Leigh made “Topsy-Turvy” without him.

That instinct to refuse has defined one of modern cinema’s most distinctive oeuvres. Over more than 50 years and roughly 20 features, Leigh has been hailed as the poet laureate of British working- and middle-class life. His subjects seem ordinary: a lonely factory worker reunites with the daughter she gave up for adoption (“Secrets & Lies”); a kindly backstreet abortionist is arrested in 1950s London (“Vera Drake”); an irrepressibly cheerful schoolteacher resists being ground down (“Happy-Go-Lucky”). His career rests on a single nonnegotiable principle: Leigh enters meetings with no script, no plot, no cast list—only his word—and for decades, first at the BBC and then across the independent world, someone has said yes, they’ll provide the funds.

Now someone has said yes once more—and it may be the final time. Bleecker Street is backing “Tender Loving Care,” Leigh’s warm, wry study of two social workers, their families, and those they care for. It is the least expensive feature of his career and, with some reluctance, almost certainly his last.

On a Zoom call from his London home, he leans into the camera, nearly filling the frame: a shock of white beard, tortoiseshell glasses, a checked shirt beneath a soft gray vest, set against a sunlit sage-green room with a wall of vivid pictures behind him. He is warm, funny, and still gloriously acerbic—happy to curse, to needle his interviewer, to wave off questions he deems “daft.” Struggling with myosotis, a muscle-wasting condition that has left him unsteady and will prevent him from attending the film’s Telluride premiere, he is clear-eyed about the realities. In terms of energy and ideas, the work “wouldn’t be a problem,” he says; the body is another matter entirely.

“Tender Loving Care” feels like a farewell—to cinema, and to movie lovers—though Leigh insists it may not be the last. The film, wry and melancholy, follows Amy (Kate O’Flynn), reeling from a breakup, as she moves in with her childhood best friend, Rosie (Alice Bailey Johnson), a social worker estranged from her family. Amy’s long-married parents, Birdie (Marion Bailey) and Geoff (Paul Jesson), round out the circle.

The casting brings a poignant beauty. Marion Bailey—Leigh’s partner of more than two decades—plays the mother. Bailey’s daughter from another marriage, Alice Bailey Johnson, plays the best friend. Though not related on screen, a real mother and daughter share the frame in a film about who sustains us when we cannot sustain ourselves. At the center is O’Flynn, whom Leigh first cast in “Happy-Go-Lucky” and who is now an Emmy frontrunner for “Widow’s Bay” and a film-award contender for this performance. “He gave me pretty much my first job, in ‘Happy-Go-Lucky,’ when I was 21,” O’Flynn says. “Working with him on what may be his last film, 20 years later, is special. No one works like Mike. You’re treated as an artist; you’re creating from the ground up. There’s no scaffolding. It’s terrifying-slash-liberating.”

Leigh and I spoke about the film, its sense of finality, and the half-century behind both.

How did the title come about?

I always title my films as late as possible. It’s about the two social workers, yes, but also the elderly couple, the young women, and the theme of caring for one another. “Tender Loving Care” seemed so obvious that I thought, “We can’t call it that.” Everyone else said, “No, call it that.” So we did.

Much of the film centers on the friendship between Amy (O’Flynn) and her best friend Rosie (Bailey Johnson). Can you discuss writing Rosie as an extension of a family she’s not related to by blood?

We develop these characters through collaboration with the actors—discussion, improvisation, and a long rehearsal before shooting. These are women in their late 30s, still single, who have been through relationships and are still trying, who could have had children but haven’t, committed to their work and to enjoying themselves. I wanted to capture the tension between fun-loving girls and responsible women—both qualities coexist. My sons are in their mid-40s, and there are people they’ve known since childhood who are part of our world. It’s that entire web of long relationships that matter.

You build films around people you know intimately. Marion Bailey has been your partner for many years.

Marion and I being partners, and Alice being her daughter, is a circumstance, but it’s neither here nor there.

Birdie has a line—“In the old house, before we moved”—that hands the character an entire history in half a sentence. How much do you think about a character’s past?

A great deal. Throughout the film we learn how Birdie and Geoff first met, about Amy as a wayward 14-year-old, about the woman who arrives having lost her husband. It’s always present in my films, but this one does it especially so—because the audience needs to understand these people in more than three dimensions.

Where does a Mike Leigh film start? When you finish one, do you know what the next will be?

Those are two questions. I don’t follow the conventional approach of deciding what the movie is and then writing it. I discover the film in the process of making it. I start with notions, then proceed as one might paint a picture or write a novel: you embark, you receive clues, and that determines where you go next. And it’s not just me—it’s an interaction with the actors and the things that happen through improvisation. In blunt terms: after making “Hard Truths,” which despite its power carried a negativity, in terms of what Pansy was like, I thought, let’s make a film that, as a corollary, has a positivity. That’s the jumping-off point. The rest is dictated by practicalities. This is a contained piece because of the restrictions on how we made it—but that liberates the idea. You operate within the parameters, and it stimulates the work.

You walk into financiers’ offices and ask for money with no plot or script—just “Trust me.” Could a first-time Mike Leigh get that meeting today, let alone the cash?

The harsh reality is probably not. I was extremely lucky in the early days. There have been many times we were told to leave by people who could have funded us. The problem today isn’t that the money doesn’t exist; it’s that the people who have it want to control things, to interfere. Someone who won’t tell what it’s about or who’s in it, and doesn’t want to be interfered with, is anathema to them. Back in the 1970s and ’80s, when independent features couldn’t be made in the U.K. at all, the BBC would say, “We don’t know what it’s about; we don’t know who’s in it. But here’s the budget; here’s the deadline; go and make a film.” My first film, “Bleak Moments,” was backed by Albert Finney, who’d made money on “Tom Jones.” Complete freedom. It would be tough now.

Has the way films get financed changed the kind of films that get made?

I’m reluctant to pontificate, because the trap in that question is concluding that no young filmmakers make interesting films—and that’s not true. This is international cinema, not just Hollywood or Britain. At any given moment, interesting independent films are being made, by hook or by crook. People find their own ways. We must be careful not to say that no decent films get made anymore, because there are plenty.

You’ve said this is probably your last film. Is that really the case?

The truth is I’m somewhat handicapped. Making this film was a pleasure; people were very helpful. Even if we decided to make another, it wouldn’t get made for two years. I’m 83, and I don’t know what state I’ll be in at 85, if I’m still here. I say it reluctantly, because in terms of energy and ideas, it wouldn’t be a problem. Those around me keep saying there must be a way. I’m skeptical.

Was there a moment on set, or when you were writing, when you decided this could be your final film?

Not honestly. It’s gradually grown.

Does that truth bother you?

I fluctuate. One minute, “Great. I don’t have to worry about that again.” The next, “Making films is a joyous thing, a gas—I love it.” So not doing it again is frustrating. But, like life, you move on.

Talk about this stunning cast quartet you’ve assembled—Kate O’Flynn, Marion Bailey, Alice Bailey Johnson and Paul Jesson.

Kate O’Flynn is completely devoid of pretension. She and I come from within a couple of miles of each other in Manchester. She’s down to earth, practical, with a massive sense of humor and no ego—though that’s true of everyone I work with. She’s a consummate character actress, and what she does in “Widow’s Bay” is phenomenal. A fantastic character actress, a great human being, and very funny. She’s a hoot. Marion Bailey has a great sense of character, a great sense of humor, and is easy to work with—a consummate character actress who can become somebody else entirely. But what she taps into here is her empathy and compassion. I agree she’s underrated. Then there’s Paul Jesson—incredibly versatile, with great gravitas and a joy; he’ll do anything, no fuss. The guy’s 80 and just does it. No bullshit; he delivers the goods with a great sense of humor. He and Marion have worked with me a few times—an old team. Alice Bailey Johnson has been around, but she hasn’t had the breaks she should have. What she and Marion achieve is a confidence, a freedom—and there’s nothing instant about it; it has to be grown and nurtured. It’s a flawless cast, down to the briefest parts. Bríd Brennan, a great Irish actress, appears very briefly as a madwoman on the ground who doesn’t want to be interfered with—and she just came and did me a favor. These are the cream of character actors. And we should talk about Lucy Bristow, the cinematographer. All my films were shot by Dick Pope. He died a couple of years ago, very sadly. Lucy worked with Dick and me for years—she was a trainee before I even worked with Dick, then a focus puller and second-camera operator. It was natural for her to shoot this, and she does a fantastic job—very understated, direct, beautifully done. I’m really proud of her.

More than 50 years, from “Bleak Moments” in ’71 to now—is there a through line you can see?

That’s hard. It all leads up to this moment. I could ask you the same. How old are you?

42.

So can you look back at 42 years and see what led to this moment?

Both yes and no—I get impostor syndrome, the feeling I’m not supposed to be here, that others worked harder. Does that happen to you?

All the time. And because the film has only just emerged and people like you are reacting to it, I’m astonished at how they’re reacting. It’s not that I don’t understand why—it’s still a surprise. Every day for six weeks at the start of the year, I’d get in a car, be driven across London in the dark, and slave through what we had to do. It was pleasant, everyone was good—but you don’t think, this’ll be a movie everyone loves or hates.

I don’t like a world where I don’t think a new Mike Leigh movie is ever coming out again. Most filmmakers and artists ever know which one will be their last. How are you feeling about that?

I’m not really thinking of it as the last movie. Thinking of it that way isn’t the same as knowing I’m unlikely to make it. These are two different things. This film doesn’t have a label in my head that says “last movie.” It just is what it is. What is happening—which happens to old people, and I am an old person—is that you look back over the years, how things developed, where you were at each stage. But on the whole, we’ve got away with it.

Let’s talk about your Oscars history. Seven nominations—five for writing, two for directing—and no win yet. Is there one loss that stings?

You’d love to win; you’re not surprised when you don’t. I won’t score votes for saying it, but it’s one of the worst-organized events, and I am in shambles. What I care about is people seeing the film.

Is there a film of yours you can’t watch anymore—or one you’d happily sit through tonight?

I’m fond of “Meantime.” Honestly, I have a privilege many filmmakers don’t: I quite like my own films. People ask if I ever watch them—yes, especially with an audience at a gig. Many filmmakers can’t watch their own films because it’s not the film they wanted; it was interfered with by the backers. That’s never happened to me. Everything on screen is what I intended. I’m not Gloria Swanson in “Sunset Boulevard,” watching my movies every night, but I can watch them. Last Christmas Day, Marion and I put on “Topsy-Turvy” and thoroughly enjoyed it.

What would you tell a young filmmaker starting out?

Never compromise. Never say, “This isn’t really what I believe in, but if I do it, then I’ll get to do what I want.” That’s nonsense. Stick to your guns.

Any regrets, as a filmmaker, or in life?

Big ones—and this isn’t a joke. For “Topsy-Turvy,” “Mr. Turner,” and “Peterloo,” we got much bigger budgets because we could say what they were about: Gilbert and Sullivan, Turner, the Peterloo massacre in Manchester in 1819. I always wanted to make a contemporary film on that scale—big-budget, multifaceted characters—where I couldn’t tell you anything about it in advance. I tried and failed endlessly, and I’m gutted I probably never will now. Even if I decided to, I couldn’t handle something that size physically. That’s my big regret—I could have made a film, perhaps several, with a broader canvas. I regret it bitterly. People said, “Well, we can’t really”—when of course they could have, easily.

And how’s Mike Leigh feeling today—at peace, grateful, restless?

It’s a chaotic world, and you’re calling from a chaotic country—the sooner they get rid of you-know-who, the better. They probably won’t let me in now that I’ve said that.

Do you think you have room in your home for me, my wife, and two kids? We make good houseguests.

The problem is, you’re not invited, I’m afraid. You don’t stand a chance.

Source link