Life Is Sweet (1990)

Life is Sweet is a deeply moving, tough slice-of-life served on the grandiose platter that is cinema. It's a rich little film centered around an incredibly dysfunctional working class family just north of London, residing in a congested yet heavily-decorated home. The family is made up of hard-working and ambitious father Andy (Jim Broadbent), playful and often whiny mother Wendy (Alison Steadman), determined and introverted adolescent Natalie (Claire Skinner), and her sarcastic often patronizing twin Nicola (Jane Horrocks).

Writer/director Mike Leigh follows this dysfunctional bunch, rarely orchestrating a frame that isn't fixated on one of the family members. Through the limitless realms of conversational intimacy and quietly effective, filmic poetry, he allows his characters to talk openly and frequently rather than handing them a contrived plot to work off of. Leigh's style is an incredible one. He takes his actors, provides them with an outline for specific scenes, and allows them to improvise and bounce ideas of one another so as to squeeze all the possibilities out of a certain scene and setting. When Leigh and his tight- knit band of actors are ready, shooting will commence.

Through this tactic, Leigh allows for a rare and unfortunately underrated style of intimacy to prevail. The first fifteen minutes of Life is Sweet provided me with an unparalleled depiction of rapid-fire conversation that I have gone far too long without seeing. This style comes from everyone in the family, who respond just quick and spontaneous enough for realism to triumph over drivel and just naturalistic enough to sound authentic and as if they're making the material up on the dime (which they relatively did). The gifted improvisationist on hand here is Horrocks, playing a deeply- troubled girl who doesn't know what she wants or what direction she is going in life and her only vice is to attack her family members and acquaintances in a demonizing, mean-spirited way. However, this character is not contemptible, at least to us, as we see her insecurity and burdened attitude from a human standpoint rather than one where our response almost seems to giggle and mimic her behavior.

To combat her family's conventional sense of behavior and the world around her, Horrocks' Nicola uses buzzwords and names she willfully takes out of context. "Fascist!," she screams at her mother after she disapproves of her daughter's actions. One can only admire her cute little resistance and opposition to authority for what it is. Her defense mechanism is taking everything, regardless of how genial and well-meaning it is, and using it as an insult or a demeaning remark from somebody ostensibly in an higher position than she is. Despite this, her character has the ability to potentially relate to other members of the audience probably more-so than any other character in this film (and they all can be pretty damn relatable).

A subplot involves a roly-poly, pudgy man named Aubrey (Timothy Spall), a good friend of this dysfunctional family who plans on opening a restaurant downtown, serving unique and somewhat- daring cuisines. Spall plays a character fit for a farce and, at first, seems to be Leigh's attempt to steer this project away from heights too depressing and offputting. However, Leigh finds ways to get this character to fit in perfectly with this dark and often bleak material, offering a slapstick force to the story that isn't too overbearing or nauseating and tiresome. Leigh writes a di

Fmovies: 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.

Just one of those films that is subjectively sublime. Honestly portrayed people just doing stuff and some of it going wrong and some of it going OK. Not sneering but celebrating a certain way of life, and so becoming a celebration of all our lives - maybe this borders into objectivity?

Funny and joyful - with what could pass as tragedy, but still funny. Plenty of the inter-personal stuff that is so often missed in pursuit of consensus cinema. The actors just appear like people that are just there - not acting but just doing things.

Reminded me of crying with laughter after getting caught putting dog-dirt (maybe not familiar with that term?) in my Grandad's petrol tank on the estate - kind of thing - like I say - subjective.

Life Is Sweet fmovies. 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

I often fantasise about directing a movie (yes, I know I'm sad!), and I would like to think that my movies would come out like Mike Leigh's: affectionate without being sentimental, funny without crossing over into out-and-out comedy, realistic without being bleak or depressing.

This portrayal of an "ordinary" English family is everything a film ought to be. Great acting - Alison Steadman in particular - her character's relentless optimism and cheerfulness interspersed with knowing when a situation needs to be treated more seriously; Jim Broadbent as the day-dreaming father and Jane Horrocks as the anorexic Nicola. All the characters are beautifully drawn, including the minor characters (Timothy Spall as doomed chef Aubrey, Stephen Rea as dodgy-dealer Patsy, David Thewlis as Nicola's unnamed lover).

Some typical Leigh scenes include the excellently framed shot of the burger-van in the scrapyard (which could almost be a painting!), and the panning shot along the back of the row of houses (implying that similar dramas are unfolding in everyone's lives).

Not much actually happens, but that's part of the point - it takes in themes of happiness, hopes and dreams, friendship and family ties. Clearly a precursor to "Secrets And Lies", this is a simpler, purer film, but with the same message of ultimate optimism.

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!