Life Is Sweet

... 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.

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!

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

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.

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.