MOVIE REVIEW: Tru Love

When 60-year-old Alice comes to Toronto six months after becoming a widow, her daughter Suzanne a lawyer is too busy at work to be home to greet her mother.

★★★★

She asks her unemployed friend Tru to step in at the last minute to look after Alice but then is shocked when she later arrives home and find that the two women have very quickly bonded. When Suzanne goes back to the office again that night, Alice takes Tru out to dinner to thank her, and the conversation soon takes a very personal turn.

Alice is fascinated to learn about 30-something-year-old Tru's life as a commitment phobic serial-bed-hopping lesbian's seemingly carefree life. She admits to having similar feelings when she was young, but confessed that back in those days one had either to get married or join a nunnery. This provokes Tru into joking that the latter would have been the same as being a lesbian. There is obviously an attraction between the two women, but both are afraid to act upon it.

The relationship between Alice and Suzanne is however is tenuous to say the least as if neither can deal with the other's grief for the departed husband/father. When it is clear that Alice's spirits are so lifted by just spending time with Tru, Suzanne steps in and meddles to try and ensure that she puts a stop to their budding relationship. It appears at first she is in denial that Alice could possibly be a lesbian, but it soon turns out that this lonely partner less woman has another reason to resent Tru making her mother so happy.

Tru on the other hand slowly realizes that with this welcoming older woman she is capable of loving someone after all. Alice never doubts her feelings but in some wonderful scenes talking to her late husband (seen on screen) she does question if this invalidates her life to date as she has not been true to her own feelings.

This very touching story is very much about the two women's quite chaste love but also equally about Alice's relationship with her own daughter which seems to have reached a very low point. It's unexpected and sudden ending was not the best way to finish the story as it didn’t really seem to give closure to all of them, well, at least to the two younger women.

It's an entertaining spirited movie about a delightful May/December relationship. Shauna MacDonald who co-wrote and co-directed as well as playing Tru gave herself a part that could/should have done more, but she did at least enable Kate Trotter who superbly played Alice and was a sheer joy as so convincingly conveyed the spirit of a woman finally discovering herself.

by Roger Walker-Dack