I've got to be honest, there were moments where I could never figure whether I was experiencing "Life is Sweet" or enduring it, a sort of built in resistance to bizarreness.
Andy (Jim Broadbent) and Wendy (Alison Steadham) are typical working-class husband and wife, the big bear of a man is a cook in a catering facility (and no pun intended) brings the bacon home and his tendency to procrastinate when it comes to the gardening chores are quite relatable and so is Wendy's good-natured attitude, that matches her children-related jobs. In a not too flashy way, both actors are funny, heart-warming and illuminate the film with their presence and they're 'normal' enough to comfort me that I'm watching a slice-of-life drama, but this is not the right mindset to enjoy a Mike Leigh's film. You've got to expect some bit of eccentricity and see how that affects your very perception of social norms (and how you eventually stand between them).
And so we get to the twin daughters Natalie (Claire Skinner) and Nicola (Jane Horrocks), one is a tomboyish hardly-smiling plumber, quite respectful toward her parents and dreaming of visiting the USA. She's doing well, is quite contented with her life, somehow I was certain Mike Leigh was insinuating a certain inclination in Natalie but nothing is definite in her characters and within the film, it's irrelevant, Natalie is asexual. Nicola is not. In fact, she's the kind of individuals you can only describe by negatives: never happy, never hungry, never cooperative etc. We learn later that she finds herself fat and ugly, goes into eating binges at night to make herself vomit (to Natalie's knowledge), in fact she's also ideologically bulimic, swallowing political slogans and 90s antisocial trends before regurgitating them to the face of capitalists or men (chauvinist pigs or potential rapists) whenever she's got the chance.
One can imagine the further damages the Internet might have caused in Nicola. I read critics saying that Wendy was the 'emotional' core of the film, that would make Nicola the emotional knot, the riddle that the family couldn't solve for years but this aspect isn't left clear until the middle section of the film and I wasn't too sure whether they were in their teenage years or not, which made some interactions between Nicola and other men quite creepy until I realized she's in her 20s.
Once the family is set up, there are two other guys making their entrance, a friend of Andy named Patsy (Stephen Rea) who sells him a dilapidated hotdog stand and Aubrey (Timothy Spall) who's opening a French restaurant 'nouvelle cuisine' like for snobbish yuppies. The film works through many parallels but at the risk of sounding superficial, I was wondering why Patsy had to be so drunk and Aubrey needed so 'weird' for lack of a better word, It's like Spall exaggerated every possible trait to make his characters funny but not in the way you laugh with the character. I read about Leigh's method and the way he lets actors improvise from the scratch but sometimes there's a limit to how much idiosyncrasy I can handle.
And so when you try to understand what's eating Nicola, how Natalie can help her, the film distracts you with a whole middle-plot involving the opening of Aubrey's restaurant, his frustration because her waitress left him and his sous chef (Moya Brady) is as cheerful as a prison gate, the sequence is intercut with a nice buddy chat between Patsy and Andy about the good old days of football and after Spall's shenanigans, I was secretly thanking Leigh for that small oasis of normality. I hate that word 'normality' by the way, I understand that the purpose of a film is to open a new window to the world and allow you to embrace the poignancy of people who are outcasts or perceive themselves so. But there was something so off-putting in Spall's character as if he was meant as the film's butt joke (there's a scene where Wendy and Andy do mock his voice and accent)
Even Nicola's secret lover played by David Thewlys and who irritated me with his constant chewing, became a more discerning person in his second scene with Nicola, criticizing her for never having a constructive talk with him, calling her feminist bluff and finally dismissing her as an empty shell, thus aggravating her misery. Which leads her to the inevitable breakdown. Like for Aubrey, there's that final moment of truth where the can of frustrations had been shaken just too much and the pain can only implode. Like for Aubrey, Wendy was present in both moments but the difference is that Wendy can't let her down, she's her daughter and that moment with all the desperation of Nicola's distress was the emotional culmination I'd been waited for, after that, I wished nothing would happen and seeing her getting along with her father and her sister was the best ending I could wish for.
(Yes, it's one of these strange ironies that the day the father slipped on a spoon and broke his leg might be the most important of a family's life, but then again, isn't the title a bit ironic?)
Leigh covered the suburban working-class of London with an eye full of compassion and the kind of fascination that is not without revulsion and I'm sad that Spall is the one whose capability to get off his state of loser doesn't leave much for optimism, and in a certain way reflects the underlying theme of the film: family and the capability for giving and forgiving...
"Life is Sweet" contains some great moments and I wish I could love it even more, but I'm going to end this with what should come as a compliment from me: this is the closest to a Cassavettes a film ever got (and like Leigh, I'm a fan of Cassavetes).
Andy (Jim Broadbent) and Wendy (Alison Steadham) are typical working-class husband and wife, the big bear of a man is a cook in a catering facility (and no pun intended) brings the bacon home and his tendency to procrastinate when it comes to the gardening chores are quite relatable and so is Wendy's good-natured attitude, that matches her children-related jobs. In a not too flashy way, both actors are funny, heart-warming and illuminate the film with their presence and they're 'normal' enough to comfort me that I'm watching a slice-of-life drama, but this is not the right mindset to enjoy a Mike Leigh's film. You've got to expect some bit of eccentricity and see how that affects your very perception of social norms (and how you eventually stand between them).
And so we get to the twin daughters Natalie (Claire Skinner) and Nicola (Jane Horrocks), one is a tomboyish hardly-smiling plumber, quite respectful toward her parents and dreaming of visiting the USA. She's doing well, is quite contented with her life, somehow I was certain Mike Leigh was insinuating a certain inclination in Natalie but nothing is definite in her characters and within the film, it's irrelevant, Natalie is asexual. Nicola is not. In fact, she's the kind of individuals you can only describe by negatives: never happy, never hungry, never cooperative etc. We learn later that she finds herself fat and ugly, goes into eating binges at night to make herself vomit (to Natalie's knowledge), in fact she's also ideologically bulimic, swallowing political slogans and 90s antisocial trends before regurgitating them to the face of capitalists or men (chauvinist pigs or potential rapists) whenever she's got the chance.
One can imagine the further damages the Internet might have caused in Nicola. I read critics saying that Wendy was the 'emotional' core of the film, that would make Nicola the emotional knot, the riddle that the family couldn't solve for years but this aspect isn't left clear until the middle section of the film and I wasn't too sure whether they were in their teenage years or not, which made some interactions between Nicola and other men quite creepy until I realized she's in her 20s.
Once the family is set up, there are two other guys making their entrance, a friend of Andy named Patsy (Stephen Rea) who sells him a dilapidated hotdog stand and Aubrey (Timothy Spall) who's opening a French restaurant 'nouvelle cuisine' like for snobbish yuppies. The film works through many parallels but at the risk of sounding superficial, I was wondering why Patsy had to be so drunk and Aubrey needed so 'weird' for lack of a better word, It's like Spall exaggerated every possible trait to make his characters funny but not in the way you laugh with the character. I read about Leigh's method and the way he lets actors improvise from the scratch but sometimes there's a limit to how much idiosyncrasy I can handle.
And so when you try to understand what's eating Nicola, how Natalie can help her, the film distracts you with a whole middle-plot involving the opening of Aubrey's restaurant, his frustration because her waitress left him and his sous chef (Moya Brady) is as cheerful as a prison gate, the sequence is intercut with a nice buddy chat between Patsy and Andy about the good old days of football and after Spall's shenanigans, I was secretly thanking Leigh for that small oasis of normality. I hate that word 'normality' by the way, I understand that the purpose of a film is to open a new window to the world and allow you to embrace the poignancy of people who are outcasts or perceive themselves so. But there was something so off-putting in Spall's character as if he was meant as the film's butt joke (there's a scene where Wendy and Andy do mock his voice and accent)
Even Nicola's secret lover played by David Thewlys and who irritated me with his constant chewing, became a more discerning person in his second scene with Nicola, criticizing her for never having a constructive talk with him, calling her feminist bluff and finally dismissing her as an empty shell, thus aggravating her misery. Which leads her to the inevitable breakdown. Like for Aubrey, there's that final moment of truth where the can of frustrations had been shaken just too much and the pain can only implode. Like for Aubrey, Wendy was present in both moments but the difference is that Wendy can't let her down, she's her daughter and that moment with all the desperation of Nicola's distress was the emotional culmination I'd been waited for, after that, I wished nothing would happen and seeing her getting along with her father and her sister was the best ending I could wish for.
(Yes, it's one of these strange ironies that the day the father slipped on a spoon and broke his leg might be the most important of a family's life, but then again, isn't the title a bit ironic?)
Leigh covered the suburban working-class of London with an eye full of compassion and the kind of fascination that is not without revulsion and I'm sad that Spall is the one whose capability to get off his state of loser doesn't leave much for optimism, and in a certain way reflects the underlying theme of the film: family and the capability for giving and forgiving...
"Life is Sweet" contains some great moments and I wish I could love it even more, but I'm going to end this with what should come as a compliment from me: this is the closest to a Cassavettes a film ever got (and like Leigh, I'm a fan of Cassavetes).