Life Is Sweet

this is another one of those movies that i loved so much the first time i saw it, i cried in the theater, went home, came back the next day with a friend in tow.

unlike the other movies i did this with (raising Arizona, after hours), the person i saw it with actually got the movie the first time, and loved it as much as i did. yes, naked and Topsy turvy got all the praise, but this is my favorite Leigh movie. it is just so...sweet.

i would talk about this movie years after seeing it saying that it was so heartbreakingly real, if you cut the screen, it would bleed. the was something so compelling about everyone in this movie. someone said they were pathetic, but i couldn't say i saw it like that. they were just flawed people doing the best they could. to me that is so beautiful. for years i would wish that America had a real working class director like mike Leigh. someone who showed people struggling. we need it so very badly, as the aftermath of Katrina can attest to. we forget our poor over here.

the funniest thing was i wold watch this movie when i got depressed, and it made me feel less alone. it cheered me up.

... as is the case with many films in the Criterion collection, because this film does not set things up nicely for you. It is a slow reveal for all of the characters with the basic theme of "hope springs eternal" or maybe "Life is what you make of it". So after I had gotten a feel for the characters I went back and rewatched it to see what I didn't pick up the first time.

The focus of the film is a working class London family. Wendy works in a shop as a salesperson. Her husband is a chef in a restaurant. They got married at 17 - with her having to drop out of college - due to her pregnancy that produced twin girls. You'd think then that this would be about their disappointment with how their lives turned out, but they are almost annoyingly positive. Wendy is the strong one, always smiling. Husband Andy is also always smiling and seems easily led by his friends. He just never gets around to fixing things around the house, and one friend (Stephen Rea), an obvious con artist, works his magic on Andy and gets him to spend money he does not have on a broken down fast food van. Andy has dreams of fixing it up and going into business for himself as he hates his job. And oddly enough Wendy doesn't explode at this expense and is very supportive. She seems to laugh her way through life.

One thing that she can't laugh through though is her daughter Nicola. She is about twenty, anorexic, a chain smoker, and completely hostile to everybody. She just sits in her room all day blurting out insults to everybody. You wonder if she is starving herself in hopes she will eventually just disappear. The other daughter seems well adjusted enough and is working as a plumber. She seems sexually ambiguous, and though nothing in the plot goes in that direction, I had to wonder if that is just me stereotyping or if it is the fact the film is 30 years old and films stereotyped too back in those days.

The family's other friend is Aubrey whose "big dream" is a Parisian themed restaurant. But his taste in decor is bizarre and tacky, he selects employees based on tenuous personal connections, and he has placed his restaurant between two businesses that would not bring foot traffic - one is a medical equipment supplier, and he has forgotten to advertise the restaurant. The result is disastrous.

The best scene in the film is one between Patsy and Nicola in which they finally have a confrontation. So much of what I have said is explained in just this one scene. Patsy does have an inner core, she can be serious and Nicola can be reached, whether she wants to admit it or not. Somebody should have gotten an Academy Award nomination just for this scene.

If you don't like this the first time, then give it a second try. I think it will grow on you.

Another reviewer has commented that this could be a fly-on-the-wall documentary rather than fiction. That hits the nail right on the head. I live some 5 miles from Enfield (where Life is Sweet was filmed) and this is completely true to life. No car chases, no martial artists, no expensive explosions, just life going on and (in the main) being fairly sweet. Everybody knows a Patsy who has a "little deal", everybody knows families like this one, everybody knows an Aubrey who never *quite* makes it. Mike Leigh knows what he's talking about, and it's enough to make a highly enjoyable movie that's worth seeing many times. I don't fancy Aubrey's "Saveloy on a bed of Lychees", though!

A superb example of Mike Leigh's directing method - working with his actors, many of them regulars, making up most of the script as they go along.

No falling empires or coveted magical rings here, just the small victories and tiny despairs of everyday life - Timothy Spall's ridiculous restaurant ("Liver in Lager"??), Jane Horrocks' eating disorder and general estrangement from the world, Jim Broadbent and his grimy little burger van, Clair Skinner's endearingly sensible tomboy plumber... all exquisite little portraits. Best of all is Alison Steadman as the suburban Earth-mother trying to hold it all together.

It shows, above all, that a great film can be about anything really, as long as the direction, acting and script is of this calibre. Ben Hur, it ain't!

Absolutely marvelous - 9/10.

I often fantasise about directing a movie (yes, I know I'm sad!), and I would like to think that my movies would come out like Mike Leigh's: affectionate without being sentimental, funny without crossing over into out-and-out comedy, realistic without being bleak or depressing.

This portrayal of an "ordinary" English family is everything a film ought to be. Great acting - Alison Steadman in particular - her character's relentless optimism and cheerfulness interspersed with knowing when a situation needs to be treated more seriously; Jim Broadbent as the day-dreaming father and Jane Horrocks as the anorexic Nicola. All the characters are beautifully drawn, including the minor characters (Timothy Spall as doomed chef Aubrey, Stephen Rea as dodgy-dealer Patsy, David Thewlis as Nicola's unnamed lover).

Some typical Leigh scenes include the excellently framed shot of the burger-van in the scrapyard (which could almost be a painting!), and the panning shot along the back of the row of houses (implying that similar dramas are unfolding in everyone's lives).

Not much actually happens, but that's part of the point - it takes in themes of happiness, hopes and dreams, friendship and family ties. Clearly a precursor to "Secrets And Lies", this is a simpler, purer film, but with the same message of ultimate optimism.