"I Am Ruth" misrepresents itself as a study on the emotional challenges of parenting social-media-addicted teens. Far from depicting the nuances of its chosen subject matter, Kate Winslet plays a mother that any teenage girl regardless of context would despise. Ruth is duplicitous and unbearably controlling, while her attempts at seeming caring and loving are devoid of anything that could be recognised as empathy.
Since the display of maternal incompetence we bear witness to tessellates with any epoch, the message we receive becomes inverted; technology is just another symptom of our disconnection rather than a primary cause. Freya's struggles with identity and validation are neither fleshed out nor framed as particularly important. Instead, we watch her suffocating at the hands of her insufferable mother who keeps couching her own self-absorption as a decent and heartfelt attempt at parenting.
To fill up the remaining allotted minutes, we're given caricatured trappings of middle-class, middle-aged womanhood, as if shoving them so vigorously down our throats will culminate in the creation of meaningful cinema. Bleurgh.