Mike Leigh

I've always felt a tad ambivalent towards Mike Leigh's films. I suppose, coming from a working-class background myself, I've sometimes found his portrayals of the working-class life to be patronising, with an undercurrent of nastiness, and plain wrong. Now, I don't know much about his background, except that he's from a Jewish Mancunian family, and that he's even older that me ( a quick look at the IMDB confirms that he's 65), but his work seems to have been part of the landscape in one form or another for as long as I can remember.

Abigail's Party, his 1970s TV play for which he's celebrated - well, I have to say I never found it funny, and thought Alison Steadman's performance was grotesque and a caricature. She repeated it years later in the BBC's Pride and Prejudice (the famous Colin Firth one in 1995) as Mrs Bennett, and I thought Brenda Blethyn played the part much better in the recent film.

Anyway, back to Mike Leigh. I thought Topsy-Turvy and Vera Drake were both wonderful - it's as if making a period film released him from something. They were both warm, humane and engrossing, with marvellous performances from all concerned. They both captured their respective periods perfectly - I took my mother to see Vera Drake and she was deeply moved. I noticed that it was set in November 1950, the month in which I was born, and its recreation of the cramped, dark, spartan, yet warm and convivial lives was almost tangible. My memories of the early 50s are fragmentary, but for her, as a young woman, it would have been like going back in time to see it so perfectly evoked.

So, I went along to see Happy-Go-Lucky, his first film since Vera Drake, buoyed by the largely favourable reviews it received everywhere, though he's usually given a pretty easy ride by the press. I suppose his caricatures of the lower middle classes resonate with metropolitan professionals, as it's the background from which so many of them have escaped. Anyway, although Leigh usually uses cheerful titles ironically, it was refreshingly free of all that, but it was hard to appreciate Poppy, the relentlessly cheerful and optimistic heroine. We see this straight away, as the bike on which she sails breezily round the streets of London, is stolen, and she blithely accepts it, and doesn't even kick the railings to which she'd locked it. She responds to everything with cheerfully sarcastic backchat, which is never funny, just annoying, but you end up sort of liking her, though she'd drive you mad if she was your friend.
It's her acceptance of what life has offered her, and her determination to make the best of things, however unpromising, that does it. She's 30, lives in a cramped rented flat with her friend, and is a primary school teacher, and is clearly in a job she loves. Her energy and enthusiasm is infectious, and you end up wishing there were more people like her around, even if she does drive you up the wall. It's her lack of vanity which does it, and her goodness of heart -
After deciding to have driving lessons before getting a car, she hooks up with grumpy, misanthropic driving instructor, played by Eddie Marsan, who, in typical schematic Leigh fashion, is the polar opposite of Poppy, and puts her in sharp relief.
Another thing I liked was the use of unfashionable parts of London - no Gherkin or Tate Modern - just Finsbury Park, more the London I'm used to; the streets seemed very familiar.
So, a decent Leigh film, in the end, and one I enjoyed. I guess it may be time to revisit his earlier stuff and take another look.