‘Sorry We Missed You’ offers no false promises

Ken Loach seldom, if ever, makes feel-good movies. His 2016 film “I, Daniel Blake,” which won a BAFTA for Outstanding British Film, is a study of one man’s struggle against the British bureaucracy that critic Owen Glieberman called “a drama of tender devastation.”

Tender moments are hard to find in “Sorry We Missed You, ” which I watched through the Magic Lantern’s streaming service . Loach’s study is of a British family struggling to survive in today’s mercantile industry that treats unskilled workers little better than automatons.

At the center are the Turners, a family of four living in the far north of England. Father Ricky is a guy who has done several construction-type jobs but has now turned to being a franchise delivery driver for an Amazon-type warehouse business. Mother Abby is a caregiver for a company that is more concerned with schedules than with the comfort of its elderly or otherwise needy clients.

Teenage Seb and pre-teen Liza Jane have their struggles, too, Seb fighting the depression that the prospect of a dark future is causing in him. And Liza Jane just wants everything to return to normal.

But that’s not about to happen, what with Ricky and Abby facing ever-increasing workloads, and Seb more interested in his art — his “tagging” of public places — than going to school. And there’s no relief in sight.

Give Loach this much: He refuses to compromise his vision. And that vision doesn’t include the kind of false hope that television sitcoms in particular offer.