Here is a tough drama of damaged lives which reunites director Sacha Polak with lead performer Vicky Knight, the star of her 2019 film Dirty God. Knight has spoken with courage about her own childhood experiences of being scarred in a pub fire in London and this film draws on her life, both in terms of her survivor’s story and her adult existence; like her character, she has worked in healthcare.
Knight plays Franky, a nurse haunted by memories of the blaze that injured her, and also by her unresolved feelings about her errant dad who ran out on the family when she was little. Franky falls in love with a troubled patient called Florence (Esmé Creed-Miles), who has tried to take her own life. Franky’s own home life with her sister and mother is complex and difficult and although Franky and Florence have their vulnerability and loneliness in common, she finds herself drawn into something approaching a quasi-daughter relationship with Florence’s caring foster mum Alice, as the relationship begins to disintegrate; this is a wise and warm performance from Angela Bruce.
