Her­self

Phyl­l­i­da Lloyd’s lat­est fea­ture feels small­er than her pre­vi­ous two big bud­get pro­duc­tions, Mam­ma Mia! and The Iron Lady, both of which starred Meryl Streep along­side an ensem­ble of famil­iar faces. In Her­self, large­ly unknown per­form­ers take cen­tre stage, led by Lloyd’s fear­less co-writer Clare Dunne as the cen­tral char­ac­ter, San­dra. It might also just be the filmmaker’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 relationship.

Forced into tem­po­rary accom­mo­da­tion at 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 her resilient daugh­ters Emma and Mol­ly (played by scene steal­ers Ruby Rose O’Hara and Mol­ly McCann), all the while under­mined by her estranged hus­band Gary, who attempts to gaslight her into return­ing to him. Despair­ing of her sit­u­a­tion and des­per­ate to keep her fam­i­ly safe, San­dra embarks on an 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’s grim social real­ism here, but not a 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. In a heart­break­ing exam­ple of the cru­el­ty of the sys­tem, San­dra is forced to drop her daugh­ters off at her ex-husband’s home every week­end due to their cus­tody agree­ment, regard­less of how trau­mat­ic this is for her, or the chil­dren who wit­nessed their father’s abu­sive behaviour.

The absur­di­ty of Sandra’s sit­u­a­tion might be 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, dig­ni­fied por­trait of a woman redis­cov­er­ing her­self after years of liv­ing in fear. Nei­ther San­dra or her chil­dren are defined mere­ly by their cir­cum­stances or expe­ri­ences, and the film goes to lengths to demon­strate that there is also love and joy in their lives as well as pain. Lloyd’s direc­tion ensures we see every­thing throw Sandra’s eyes, and flash­backs to Gary’s abu­sive episodes call to mind the frac­tured expe­ri­ence of PTSD.

So many films are brand­ed ​‘urgent’ nowa­days, but in the case of Her­self the term real­ly does feel apt. Reform of women’s rights to ensure bet­ter pro­tec­tion from vio­lence is essen­tial; Lloyd’s unfail­ing­ly com­pas­sion­ate film high­lights this while man­ag­ing to remain full of warmth. For all the dark­ness and pain San­dra and her daugh­ters live through, there’s light too, and the found fam­i­ly that is cre­at­ed out of trau­mat­ic cir­cum­stances give them some­thing they haven’t expe­ri­enced in a long time: hope.