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Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)

Director: Mike Leigh

Time Out rating

Average user rating

192 reviews

Synopsis

Poppy (Sally Hawkins) is a 30-year-old Londoner with a bright outlook on life. She loves her job, she loves her friends, she loves her freedom. Mike Leigh's new film follows her over a few weeks one spring as she learns to drive and embarks on a new romance.

Movie review

From Time Out London

Sally Hawkins is a real delight in Mike Leigh’s new film as Poppy, a 30-year-old Londoner with a bubbly nature and an ever-present laugh that teeters between lovable and annoying. Hawkins’ performance, and Leigh’s harnessing of it, is a tease: when we first see Poppy, cycling through the West End and joking with a grumpy bookshop assistant before joining her friends for a late-night drunken session, we don’t know what to make of her. She’s loud, joyful and indulges in terrible jokes; surely there’s something wrong with her?

The trick that Leigh and Hawkins finally pull off so cleverly by the end of 'Happy-Go-Lucky’ is that we’re entirely in cahoots with her. Poppy is a mirror to us all: if we find her blind optimism and sunny nature hard to swallow, perhaps there’s something wrong with us instead? By then, too, we know that Poppy is not the blinkered soul we may first think: she is compassionate, perceptive and harbours her own sadnesses like the rest of us.

Leigh always finds plot in character, and ‘Happy-Go-Lucky’ is more of a portrait than a story; a film that’s built around one performance. He is less concerned here, unlike, say, ‘Secrets & Lies’ and ‘Vera Drake’, with following a driving narrative than with minutely observing Poppy through her relationships with others, whether it’s the kids she teaches at her primary school, her repressed driving instructor (Eddie Marsan, excellently playing a heavy-duty bag of hang-ups), her close friend and flatmate Zoe (Alexis Zegerman) or her older, more settled colleague Heather (Sylvestra Le Touzel), whom she joins at flamenco lessons after work. In that sense, it’s comparable to ‘Naked’.

It’s a study in sadness versus happiness, a study in teachers and the taught, a study in how we carry with us everyday the burdens of what we have and haven’t learned. You know you’re watching something both delightfully light-footed and acutely meaningful when Leigh moves so nimbly between scenes at Poppy’s school, her flamenco class and her driving lessons. There’s also a wonderfully moving scene, darker and more poetic in tone, when Poppy encounters a tramp late at night. It’s a funny film – a surprise perhaps after ‘Vera Drake’ – and, crucially, it aches with truth.

Author: Dave Calhoun 2008-02-13 15:43:17

Time Out London Issue 1965: April 17 - 23, 2008

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User reviews of this film

Nixfromoz said...

Posted on Oct 21 2009 10:32 This film celebrates a heart of not only happiness, but gratitude, faith and love. It should be a lesson to all that view it, especially those who dislike it. If more were to follow it's example, it would indeed cure most of the world's ills in today's society. Focusing on what is good and right in our lives is far more satisfying than devoting our thoughts to stress and negativity. Think about it. . .

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meme said...

Posted on Oct 13 2009 01:51 Why is it that people who liked the film slam personally those who don't?

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Leslie R said...

Posted on Oct 13 2009 00:50 The best actor in this film, Eddie Marsan, (the driving instructor) is going to be in the new Sherlock Holmes movie with Jude Law and Robert Downey, Jr. At least something good came out of this dreadful film!

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joanna moraitis said...

Posted on Oct 12 2009 20:14 one of the best films I have seen for a long time

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Gerhard said...

Posted on Oct 11 2009 23:31 Sad, sad, sadly insignificant cinematography.

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joe koza said...

Posted on Oct 11 2009 06:13 The last comment was very telling from a sad man who lost his 'happy' girlfriend! He condemns the film, yet gives it four stars! For one thing, this woman is not childish but childlike, an important difference. As for all the negative people in the world, well they are the architects of their own misfortune!

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Smola said...

Posted on Oct 11 2009 04:57 It appears to me that the director had a girlfriend just like Poppy. I had one. It is very sad. Those persons deny everything and just keep smiling. They are very childish, and instead of taking responsibility, they take others' actions to be responsible. It was the sadest film I've ever watched. The driving-instructor character is irrelevant. The things he says about Poopy are! She is annoying and cannot interact with normal people, she turns everything to a joke. One cannot cope with this.

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mebo said...

Posted on Sep 23 2009 13:07 This the most insipid movie I have evre seen.It was torure to sit through.

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joe koza said...

Posted on Sep 23 2009 10:09 the time out critic hits the nail on the head when he writes 'it aches with truth' It is a portrait, of a dippy, happy, individual who has a caring profound side to her. People who dont get it must have something profoundly lacking in themselves. This woman may be initially annoying but over the entire film, presents a rather sympathetic person, one who i would easily befriend, as she is what we all should be, HELPFUL and FRIENDLY!!!

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rick said...

Posted on Sep 22 2009 22:15 an unmitigated complete FAIL

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waste said...

Posted on Sep 21 2009 20:44 This film is pure agony to sit through. If it were a book, nobody would read past the first 15 pages. If it were a documentary, nobody would care. But it's cinema, so critics get to say how great it is. Don't believe them. If you've lived through your 20's without getting married, you probably have a much more interesting story than that portrayed in this drivel-with-a-violin-soundtracked work. Waste of time. Needs a negative star rating.

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Tatiana said...

Posted on Aug 31 2009 12:27 I also found the movie very annoying. If a woman is dressed like Poppy and has this sticky idiotic smile pinned to her face all the time, it's because deep down (and very obvious to me) she's very unhappy and indulges in her own unhappiness. It's a very socialist realism type of movie and, although very politically correct, it creates no value for the viewers or history. Everything has been said before, and in a much more fascinating way.

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David said...

Posted on May 25 2009 07:50 This film is a delight and had me rolling around the floor laughing. Sally Hawkins has real talent.

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Simon said...

Posted on May 22 2009 22:44 Wow. What an appalling film. Poor acting, dialogue, characterisation and story. NOTHING happens, and you are not even left with any feeling for the main characters. I like trival, mundane stories of ordinary pepole. This film made Christmas at Eastenders believable! I guess that you would like it if this was you first experience of MOVING PICTURES ....

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LizFish said...

Posted on Apr 14 2009 02:06 my son and I found it intriguing - in that we were convinced that at some point things would happen to justify the incidedntal chit chat we'd tolerated. The person who gave me it said he'd laughed all the way through. We kept waiting for something funny, then when we got really fed up were longing for tragedy - convinced there was going to be some twist. The heroine seemed in denial rather than happy and positive --- i thought she was just showing everything to the back of her smile like old cheese in the fridge.
The acting was OK particularly the driving instructor.
Most scenes dragged on and on. Would be better as an ongoing tuesday night soap for people who wish tpo avoid provocation.

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