Her­self – first look review

Phyl­l­i­da Lloyd’s lat­est fea­ture feels small­er than her pre­vi­ous two, Mam­ma Mia! and The Iron Lady, both of which starred Meryl Streep along­side an ensem­ble of famil­iar faces. In Her­self, the cast is com­prised of large­ly unknown per­form­ers, led by fear­less co-writer Clare Dunne as the cen­tral char­ac­ter, San­dra. It might also just be Lloyd’s finest work to date, an inti­mate por­tray­al of one woman’s strug­gle to improve life for her­self and her young chil­dren after flee­ing an abu­sive husband.

Forced into tem­po­rary accom­mo­da­tion in an air­port hotel (where the fam­i­ly are for­bid­den from using the guest entrance for fear their appear­ance might star­tle the pay­ing guests), San­dra works two jobs to sup­port daugh­ters Emma and Mol­ly, all the while under­mined by her estranged hus­band Gary, who attempts to gaslight her into return­ing to him. Despair­ing of her sit­u­a­tion, San­dra embarks on the uncon­ven­tion­al jour­ney to build her own ​“tiny home” from scratch, aid­ed by her gen­er­ous employ­er Peg­gy (Har­ri­et Wal­ter) and a group of sup­port­ive friends and well-wishers.

There are shades of Ken Loach and Mike Leigh here, albeit with­out any trace of melo­dra­ma. Dunne approach­es Sandra’s sto­ry from a mat­ter-of-fact point of view, show­ing how for many vic­tims of abuse, reflec­tion is a lux­u­ry they sim­ply can not afford, not to men­tion how the sys­tems put in place to pro­tect such peo­ple often fail them. San­dra is forced to drop her daugh­ters off at her ex-husband’s home every week­end per their cus­tody agree­ment, regard­less of how the kids them­selves feel about it.

The absur­di­ty of Sandra’s sit­u­a­tion is hard to fath­om, but it’s dai­ly life for mil­lions of women across the world who are forced to share close quar­ters with their abusers. Lloyd and Dunne suc­ceed in giv­ing a voice to the voice­less, while also offer­ing a nuanced por­trait of a woman redis­cov­er­ing her­self after years of liv­ing in fear. Cru­cial­ly, nei­ther San­dra or her chil­dren are defined mere­ly by their cir­cum­stances or experiences.

So many films are brand­ed ​‘urgent’ nowa­days, but in the case of Her­self the term real­ly does feel apt. Reform of women’s rights with a view to ensur­ing their pro­tec­tion from vio­lence is essen­tial; Lloyd’s film high­lights this while man­ag­ing to remain full of love and warmth. For all the dark­ness and pain San­dra lives through, there’s light too, and the found fam­i­ly that is cre­at­ed out of trau­ma give her some­thing she hasn’t felt in a long time: hope.