Mike Leigh's 'Happy-Go-Lucky': preview

Mike Leigh‘s ’Happy-Go-Lucky‘, starring Sally Hawkins and Eddie Marsan, had its world premiere in Berlin. Dave Calhoun praises a lighter – but no less insightful – film from our country‘s leading filmmaker

Fans of Mike Leigh can breathe out: his first film since ‘Vera Drake’ is fresh, funny and further proof that this 65-year-old filmmaker is at the height of his powers. His new film may be a comedy, but it’s a Mike Leigh film all right: bold, sensitive and true – and blessed with performances of rare depth.

There’s often one character that lords over his films, whether it’s David Thewlis’ Johnny in ‘Naked’, Timothy Spall’s Maurice in ‘Secrets and Lies’ or Imelda Staunton’s eponymous abortionist in ‘Vera Drake’. With ‘Happy-Go-Lucky’, Leigh again offers us a memorable and well-crafted persona in Sally Hawkins’ Poppy, who we follow intimately from the first to the last shot of a film that has many pleasures – not least Hawkins’ lovely performance as a glass-half-full, 30-year-old Londoner.

But the tone of ‘Happy-Go-Lucky’ is much lighter than any of those other films. In its use of comedy, sometimes laugh-out-loud, to reveal truths that are both happy and sad, it’s reminiscent of Leigh’s earlier television films such as ‘Nuts in May’ and ‘Abigail’s Party’. Yet that comparison only goes so far. What ‘Happy-Go-Lucky’ most feels like is a positive inversion of ‘Naked’, the bleak 1993 film that followed a hate-filled loner (Thewlis) around our streets. Both are contemporary London tales; both are slyly telling of the times; both look for moments of poetry within realism (here an atonal late-night meeting with a tramp); both are composite portraits of an individual as much as straight stories. While Johnny of ‘Naked’ was a misanthrope of the highest order, the defining characteristic of Hawkins’ Poppy is her joie de vivre. Leigh’s films are often – and lazily – described as miserable. This is joyful, life-affirming and proud of it.

We first catch sight of Poppy on a spring day as she cycles through Holborn, across the river and down to a bookshop on Lower Marsh Road where she jokes relentlessly with a sad-faced shop assistant . Poppy is smiling, all at ease, dressed brightly, full of life. Next, we see her at Koko in Camden, pogo-ing to Pulp before she and mates stagger back to her flat in Finsbury Park and mess around as the sun comes up.

It should be a little surprising when, 20 minutes in, we discover why Poppy and her flatmate, Zoe (Alexis Zegerman) have been battling their hangovers by making chicken-head costumes out of brown paper bags. She’s a primary-school teacher, and a dedicated and caring one. She keeps an eye out for bullies and the bullied. She shares her kids’ wonder as they discuss the migration of birds (‘It’d be amazing to fly, wouldn’t it?'). She even spends time in the pub worrying about PlayStations, lack of open space and the stress of working parents.

‘Happy-Go-Lucky’ is sly entertainment. It’s only when you’re resigned to a funny, touching, well-observed character study that themes start to coalesce. Within the typically deep performances, moments of humour and patches of melancholy, there emerges something deeper.

This pacy, funny film becomes a study in sadness versus happiness; teachers and the taught; how every day we carry with us the burdens of what we have or haven’t learned along the way; how, as Poppy says, life ‘can be hard at times, but that’s part of it’. The moment you know you’re watching something both wonderfully light-footed and cleverly truthful is when Leigh moves nimbly between scenes at school, an after-work flamenco class that Poppy attends with a colleague (a highlight) and one of her driving lessons.

It’s those driving lessons with Scott (Eddie Marsan) that, along with a trip to an uptight sister in Southend and a romance with a social worker (Samuel Roukin), offer most in the way of story and reflect Poppy by contrasting her with a man who is bitter, angry and unable to cope with her (‘You celebrate chaos!’ Scott whines). Scott stands in opposition to this critic who never – despite some early niggles – found Poppy’s bubbly nature and colourful dress too much. Marsan is excellent. There’s even a hint of Thewlis’ Johnny when he lunges into a speech about how the measurements of a memorial in Washington DC add up to the devilish number of 666.

Light, smart and illuminating, ‘Happy-Go-Lucky’ is a greater film than it even pretends to be. By viewing one life, it allows us to consider them all.

‘Happy-Go-Lucky’ opens in April 2008.