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When it comes to directing his leading ladies, it's hard to argue with Mike Leigh's track record.
After all, the five-time Academy Award nominee guided Brenda Blethyn and Imelda Staunton to Oscar nods of their own for Secrets & Lies and Vera Drake, respectively. Not one for writing a traditional script, Leigh develops his stories by starting with what he describes as just a "feeling" of a character and a plot. He then collaborates with his actors, allowing them to improvise and take their characters in whatever direction their creative instincts send them.
"Whether you're painting or you're writing, you take what you've improvised and you work it, and that's the creative process," Leigh said in an interview with The Diamondback. "What I discovered a long time ago is rather than do that creative process on paper - since I'm not concerned with making a paper product, but rather an organic thing called a movie or a play - why not take what you call the writing process and the rehearsal process, put them together and involve the actors?"
It's a lot of responsibility for his cast - but the results can be golden in the hands of the right star. And in Leigh's latest effort, Happy-Go-Lucky, it is 32-year-old character actress Sally Hawkins (Cassandra's Dream) who shines the brightest. Her turn as Poppy, the charming British school teacher who perpetually bursts through the seams with contagious joy and optimism, is one of the year's best performances.
"Working with Sally Hawkins is an endless delight, as is Sally Hawkins herself," Leigh said with a smile. "She's extremely intelligent, she's extremely creative, she has got a great sense of humor, she's very hardworking and she is very generous. She is a true ensemble actor, and she's incredibly resourceful and effective in that setting."
Happy-Go-Lucky follows Poppy through a stream of loosely connected vignettes as she goes about her fairly normal days. Giving the story just a touch of cohesiveness is an overarching series of tension-riddled - though highly amusing - driving lessons with Poppy's surly instructor, Scott (the marvelous Eddie Marsan, Hancock).
"It was funny and sometimes frightening," Leigh said. "We drove around in an actual car, and I just lied in the back seat, suffering from trying not to laugh and trying not to be in the rear-view mirrors."
As Poppy jumps on a trampoline at the gym, she sails through the air without a care - much in the same fashion she freely floats through life. Spending her time learning how to drive and playing with children, Poppy is a vintage example of someone caught between childhood and adulthood, even though she is confronting the problem a decade later than most.
At times, the film does feel overly frivolous and a bit disjointed. But Hawkins' delightful performance does just enough to carry the movie while you adjust to its fluid structure and unusually hopeful tone. Colorfully set, eccentrically costumed and cheerfully scored, Happy-Go-Lucky is, as Leigh puts it, his "anti-miserablist film."
A slew of outstanding supporting roles, including memorable appearances by Stanley Townsend (Flawless) as a prattling homeless man and newcomer Karina Fernandez, playing an overzealous flamenco teacher, keep the film from slowing down too much. Once again, Leigh's distinctive methods helped him draw a wide range of vibrant performances from his entire cast.
"At no stage of the entire operation will [the actors] know anything about the whole film, aside from what each actor's character would know," Leigh said. "I like to provide situations where they can completely explore the characters in a spontaneous and organic way."
Happy-Go-Lucky is a realist film that focuses on the simple oddities of everyday life, and for Leigh, it is the ideal subject matter. The 65-year-old, who wholeheartedly emphasizes he is not a "Hollywood filmmaker," actually wonders why other writers go beyond the realm of reality themselves.
"I would ask the question, 'Why do people make films about implausible, fantastic and, therefore, deeply uninteresting other things?'" Leigh said. "People love to see movies that they can relate to and that resonate with their own lives. Life is a rich cornucopia of interesting things to be harvested and enjoyed."
tfloyd1@umd.edu
RATING: 3 1/2 out of 5 stars
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