Bad Behaviour

Les Blair's improvised feature is the sort of film Mike Leigh might have made if he liked people. It shares the same pleasing regard for the textures of the everyday, but gone is the malign tendency towards futile caricature; instead, this Kentish Town slice-of-life chimes with affection for its characters as they shamble their way through middle-class mid-life crisis. Gerry (Rea) is a North London council planning officer wrestling with a local permanent site for travellers. His wife Ellie (Cusack) looks after the kids and does a part-time stint in a bookshop. He's from Belfast, she's from Dublin, and even at home their heads seem to be in different places, but a chance entanglement with a building-trade scam-merchant (Leigh regular Philip Jackson), the contrasting fortunes of Claire Higgins' insecure single mum, and an office romance-that-never-was has the effect of making them realise how close and interdependent they really are.