Life Is Sweet

What can I say that previous fans of this movie have not said yet? I think that Mike Leigh is the best filmmaker working today. So, I won't bother rehashing the story line.

I am convinced even thinking back to 1991, when it was released in the US, that Life is Sweet was the best of that year. That year was remembered more for, among others, Schindler's List, The Remains of the Day and The Piano.

Alison Steadman seemingly insensitive lighthearted outlook on the world -laughing after nearly every sentence she or others utter, which incredibly I never tired of (an amazing feat), is all just her way of dealing with life. She sees it for what it is. The scene where she explains to her daughter Nicola how much of a sacrifice that she and her husband have made for the sake of their family is one of the most touching I have seen between a mother and daughter. I felt as though I was eaves-dropping while watching it. What a pleasure!

This unpredictable and hard-hitting film follows the lives of the fascinating characters who make up a lower-middle-class family. A character-based story, there really isn't a plot, as there isn't a plot in our everyday lives, but it is all the more interesting for that.

The parents are amicable beings: the mother Wendy a chirpy, motherly character (very well-acted), the father incredibly laid-back, yet hard-working at a job he hates. Their two daughters are like chalk and cheese: Natalie, a plumber, is quiet and practical (I thought she was a boy at first: hers is a curiously unsexed character) while Nicola is a complete mess.

The ugliness of true life is shown beside its mundane beauty. The shocking scenes of Nicola's self-torture (she is a secret bulimic) are juxtaposed with scenes of the mother dusting, and the ordinary cheerfulness of the rest of the family. A bizarre family friend, Aubrey, and his dream of running his own restaurant provide a subplot of sorts, but the domestic drama is far more interesting.

Horricks gives a startling good performance as the disturbed Nicola: she drips with self-loathing, but inspires pity. The most poignant scene is one in which her boyfriend, no Einstein himself, becomes fed up with her intense sexual demands, and asks her to prove her intelligence by having a real conversation with him. Nicola, whom we know is intelligent, cannot bring herself to do this: she is compelled to always show herself in the worst light. She can only mutter 'I AM intelligent' in a voice of despair. The boyfriend departs, leaving her in a state of even more intense self-hatred and depression. It is hard-hitting scenes like this one which stick in the memory.

The mother, Wendy, who appears a scatterbrain at first, emerges as a dignified, wise and compassionate woman, as she responds in a touching scene to her troubled daughter Nicola.

It's such a plain-looking film, yet it is striking because of the intensity of its characters, and the honesty of director Mike Leigh's observations. Although life is hard for the family, it is also sweet. That, I think, is Leigh's message.

Mike Leigh is one of the true independent auteurs in the British film industry, and one of the few major British directors who has not allowed himself to be seduced away by Hollywood. His films, generally based on modern urban English working-class or middle-class life, concentrate more on character than on action and have a very distinctive style which arises out of his equally distinctive method of working, based upon allowing a story to emerge through improvisation, rehearsals and discussions with his cast before shooting actually begins. He generally uses a select group of actors, including Jim Broadbent, Timothy Spall and his one-time wife Alison Steadman.

Broadbent, Spall and Steadman all appear in "Life Is Sweet", a comedy based upon the lives of a family from the North London suburb of Enfield- father Andy, mother Wendy and their 22-year-old twin daughters Natalie and Nicola. Andy works as a chef, but hates his job and harbours ambitions of running his own business. He has bought a dilapidated fast-food van which, at some unspecified future date, he intends to clean and restore in order to start up a fast-food business, but has not taken any further steps towards realising his goal. Another major character is Andy's friend Aubrey, another chef, who has taken his own entrepreneurial ambitions a stage further by opening his own French restaurant named "The Regret Rien" after the Edith Piaf song.

Like a number of British film-makers from the eighties and early nineties, Leigh made his films from an essentially left-wing position and was critical of the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher. "Life is Sweet", which appeared in the last year of her premiership, can be seen as a veiled satire on the cult of the entrepreneur which flourished under Thatcherism and on the tendency to see business, both big and small, as the sole key to national success. The characters of Andy and Aubrey are well contrasted. Andy is a competent chef but lacks the drive to become a successful independent businessman; his ambitions never seem to amount to much more than vague daydreams. As Wendy says, he has "two speeds, slow and stop".

Aubrey, by contrast, is a man whose inordinate faith in his own abilities is matched only by an incompetence which will surely doom his business career to failure. Much of the humour derives from the bizarre nouvelle cuisine dishes he takes a perverse pleasure in devising. (Saveloy on a bed of lychees, anyone?) When Aubrey's business does not work out as well as he hoped he takes refuge in alcohol.

The film is as much about Andy's home life as his work life, if not more so. His two daughters, although twins, are completely unlike both in looks and in character. Natalie, crop-haired and chunky, is a tomboy who works as a plumber and spends her leisure time playing pool and drinking with her male workmates. Nicola, who is unemployed, is extremely thin, a sufferer from bulimia and a chain-smoker. Whereas Natalie is relatively placid, Nicola is neurotic, bitter, foul-tempered and much given to hurling abuse at her family and acquaintances. She claims to believe in various left-wing causes- "capitalist!" is her favourite insult for her father because of his business ambitions- but never does anything active to further them. Natalie does not appear to have any romantic interests in her life- none of her male drinking chums count as boyfriends, and although some have seen her as a stereotypically "butch" lesbian, she has no girlfriends either. Nicola, by contrast, has an active sex life, although a rather odd one- she likes her rather reluctant boyfriend to smear chocolate spread over her chest.

The two acting performances which really stand out come from Spall as Aubrey- a brilliant comic creation- and Jane Horrocks as Nicola, an equally brilliant tragi-comic one. The film is, however, really an good example of ensemble acting, and there are also great contributions from Steadman as Wendy and Broadbent as Andy.

With its general theme of frustrated ambition and a character as unbalanced as Nicola, "Life is Sweet" could easily have been made as a tragedy. Yet that title is not meant ironically. Leigh might not be a large-C Conservative, but this film suggests that he is a small-c conservative when it comes to family values, and the film is very much about family life. For all their eccentricities, the family at the centre of "Life is Sweet" is not intended to be portrayed as a dysfunctional one. It is a family that functions, although in ways that outsiders might perceive as strange. The sensible, steadfast Wendy and Andy, who beneath some surface peculiarities is a deeply caring man, have an unconditional love for their daughters. They are prepared to make allowances for Nicola's behaviour, which is the result of emotional insecurities rather than spitefulness or malevolence. "We don't hate you! We bloody love you, you stupid girl!" (We learn that Wendy got pregnant with the twins as an unmarried teenager but refused to have an abortion because of a belief in the sanctity of life).

After all the storms, the film ends on a note of calm and hopefulness. This is one of the most distinctive, and one of the best, British social comedies from the early nineties. 8/10

A sublime slice of ordinary life from Mike Leigh. He takes us through 5 days in the life of a London family: Jim Broadbent, Alison Steadman and their twin daughters Claire Skinner and Jane Horrox. What follows is by turns touching, hilarious and unsettling. Leigh is often compared to Ken Loach, but Loach deals with unspeakably grim and often melodramatic scenarios. The far more impressive gift of Leigh is to make tales from the apparently unremarkable. So many touches run true here; Steadman doing a little dance to herself alone in the kitchen, Broadbent and Stephen Rea drunkenly reciting the Spurs Double side, Skinner describing an arthritic old woman met on her plumbing round. And the tragedy of the film is also unveiled naturally and feels horribly believable.

The performances are also astonishing. Broadbent and Steadman, both distinctive actors, can descend into parody but here are just hugely enjoyable. Skinner is nicely deadpan but the star is Horrox, playing a twitching wreck of a girl who mainly communicates in one word insults. Little wonder she's been given so many chances to prove her talents subsequently, just a shame she's never taken them. The only false note is Tim Spall as a manic chef. Perhaps that's because he's simply put in for comic value (he was far better in Leigh's 'Secrets and Lies'), his character given none of the depth which lights up the rest of the film.

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.