Another Year

Cannes (Official Selection) - Divided into four seasons, Mike Leigh's latest film recounts the events in the lives of an ordinary couple, their friends and family over the course of a year. Emma Rowley is drawn into an absorbing tragicomedy that is characteristic of the best of the director's work.

Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen) are a couple whose quiet, affectionate bond attracts other people into their lives and home. Their story opens one spring when the pair are in their early sixties. Gerri is a counsellor at a London GP's surgery, where she works with Mary (Lesley Manville), a nervous administrator in her forties who expends a great deal of time convincing herself and others that she's happy with her lot. She is (she claims) a free spirit, content in her rented flat, single existence and secretarial job. That is, until she has too much wine, an apparently frequent occurrence during her equally frequent dinner visits. Then her thin shell cracks and she becomes a needy wreck who the patient pair have to placate and put to bed like a surrogate child.

Like Mary, Tom's friend Ken (Peter Wight) is having troubles dealing with growing older alone. He's no longer welcome in the pubs he used to frequent, which have become fashionable bars filled with loud kids, and he fears retirement though he no longer enjoys his work. Instead, he overindulges in food and booze and nurses a hopeless crush on Mary. Unfortunately, she has begun to notice Gerri and Tom's son Joe (Oliver Maltman), a cheerfully single 30-year-old who she has known since childhood and who becomes the focus of her wine-fuelled flirtations. But when Joe shows signs of moving on with his life, Mary becomes more and more unbalanced.

Mary is, superficially, a very similar character to Poppy, the peppy protagonist of Leigh's last film, Happy-Go-Lucky. But in fact they have completely opposing personalities. Wheras Poppy is a genuine optimist able to take pleasure in whatever life serves up, Mary's energy has its roots in a deep self-deceit and self-pity that prevents her from finding any peace or enjoyment. The film charts her unravelling as it notes the solid happiness of the couple, a distinction that becomes more pronouncd as events progress.

There are those who relish the detail and character development of Mike Leigh's comic/tragic realism and there are those who simply find his work too close to home, too unstrucured, too depressing. But no-one can fairly say that his focus is exclusively on unhappy characters after his championing of the sometimes infuriating Poppy, and now Tom and Gerri; the sort of unremarkable people who are usually ignored by quality filmmakers, unless to be laughed at. But while Leigh has some fun with the pair (their names invite a comparison with another co-dependent on-screen couple) he also grants them a wealth of earthy symbolic ties – to their garden, their allotment, cooking, geology – indicating that their grounded family life is the source of their contentment.

But he is equally interested in the destuctive power of families. Imelda Staunton pops up in an early scene as a female patient so ravaged by her family life that she cannot sleep or even express her unhappiness. Meanwhile, unresolved family issues have turned Gerri and Tom's nephew (ably played by Martin Savage) into a rage-filled dynamo, whose selfishness ruins his mother's funeral, even as he blames his father for his inconsiderate behaviour towards her.

As is usual, Leigh's script was worked up after intensive improvisational rehearsals with the cast. It's a technique that continues to produce convincing interactions between the characters; and with so many talented comedians taking part (not least the fabulous Jim Broadbent), there are plenty of laughs to be had at their foibles.

Is it too slight a story to have a shot at the big prize? This reviewer hopes not and feels that, so far, it's one of the finest films of the festival. Lesley Manville's fearless, vulnerable performance as Mary should also make her a contender for the Best Actress prize.

Rating on a scale of 5 awkward moments at a family barbeque: 5

Release date: TBC
Directed by: Mike Leigh 
Written by: Mike Leigh
Cast: Jim Broadbent, Lesley Manville, Ruth Sheen, Peter Wight, Oliver Maltman, David Bradley, Karina Fernandez, Martin Savage, Michele Austin, Imelda Staunton
Rating: TBC
Running time (mins): 129 (Cannes Film Festival cut)