High hopes

Happy-Go-Lucky
Review by Nathan Weinbender

“Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.” — J.M. Barrie

Yes, but is that sunshine always welcome?

Poppy, the heroine of Mike Leigh’s “Happy-Go-Lucky,” certainly cannot keep her sunshine to herself, but she is so aggressively upbeat and unflinchingly optimistic that her sunshine can often turn into a storm cloud.

She is a primary school teacher in northern London who always sees the glass as overflowing. She lives to inflict her happiness on other people, and she doesn’t seem to recognize the hostility with which she is often met. Poppy is so bouncy and energetic that when her bike is stolen she laughs it off—“I never even got a chance to say goodbye,” she scoffs.

The missing bicycle inspires her to take driving lessons, and her instructor, Scott, is a real stick in the mud. He resents Poppy’s perkiness and grimaces a lot in her presence; when he’s finally pushed to the edge, he erupts, and his monologue reveals the darkness that is always lurking beneath the surface of Leigh’s films.

But plot summary doesn’t do the film (or any Mike Leigh film, for that matter) justice. It is not a story but a portrait. It features subplots that often lead nowhere, much like they do in real life.

Leigh is a great writer-director, and he typically explores the drudgery of lower-middle class life in Britain. Poppy is unlike any other character he has created, and this film works as an antidote to his earlier works—can you imagine Poppy encountering the back-alley abortionists in his “Vera Drake,” or David Thewlis’ vicious rapist in his “Naked?” I wonder if she could cheer them up.

Leigh rarely uses a complete script, instead allowing his actors to improvise and grow into their characters, and what Hawkins and Eddie Marsan, who plays Scott, do with their roles is astonishing—how fully they embody people who, at face value, seem like mere cartoons. They’re the reason the movie works so well.

Hawkins especially is completely captivating. She will probably rub some viewers the wrong way—I can say that if I were to encounter Poppy in the flesh, I would likely be irritated by her—but it’s a credit to her performance that she makes us fall in love with Poppy from the first frame.

Grade: A

Directed and written by Mike Leigh. Starring Sally Hawkins, Eddie Marsan, Alexis Zegerman, Kate O’Flynn and Samuel Roukin. R; 118m.