HAPPY-GO-LUCKY
Written & Directed by Mike Leigh
Produced by Simon Channing Williams
Released by Miramax
UK. 118 min. Rated R
With Sally Hawkins, Eddie Marsan, Alexis Zegerman, Andrea Riseborough, Sinéad Matthews, Kate O’Flynn, Sarah Niles, Sylvestra le Touzel, Karina Fernandez & Stanley Townsend
 

Mike Leigh’s latest character piece is not just movie, but a way of life. His lead character, Poppy Cross, fearlessly takes to heart the message of the Monty Python song “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” with a wink and a laugh, but no irony. Since seeing the film, I have asked myself more than once, WWPD— What Would Poppy Do?

Wearing a gawky and infectious smile, actress Sally Hawkins pulls out all the stops, perpetually in manic motion. Poppy’s both endearing and a bit tiresome, at least at first. Her incessant banter is like a stream-of-consciousness commentary, immune to an unresponsive audience or a surly stare. Nothing fazes the 30-year-old single North Londoner. When her bike is stolen, her response is not anger but sadness—she didn’t get to say good-bye. Her reaction may be hard to believe, but Leigh’s script is nothing if not consistent. Poppy laughs, even when she’s physically in pain.

Every Saturday afternoon, she takes driving lessons (now that she’s without a bike) from the dour and tightly wound Scott. He doesn’t so much instruct as bark, whether it’s at her inappropriate footwear or other drivers. (Poppy can’t believe what comes out of his mouth.) At their third lesson, he explodes; she’s still wearing kinky boots. Actor Eddie Marsan becomes so red in the face you fear for his heart.

Assuming she’s flighty, he’s amazed that she has the ability to focus as a schoolteacher. The audience might side with Scott on that point until you see her at work. Here, her attention is squarely on the children. In the classroom, her goofiness runs free, but she firmly controls her charges. Either her intuition or her experience leads her to conclude that one belligerent boy has problems at home (one of the few possible clues to her outlook).

Regardless of how Poppy comes across initially, by the film’s end the audience will feel, if not admiration, then protective towards her. A sense of her fragility and fleeting bursts of self-doubt pierce through her cheery disposition. No matter how often she assures her best friend/flatmate that she’s fine, there’s a tinge of sadness in her voice. When Poppy does drop her guard, briefly, the tension in Hawkins’s face vanishes; she looks like another person completely.

Given that this is a Mike Leigh film, I was begrudgingly prepared for Poppy to face the worse—will Poppy snap? He does put her disposition to the test, especially with Scott, but it is no spoiler to reveal that Happy-Go-Lucky is miles away from the postwar bleakness of Vera Drake. It’s his sweetest film and downright sunny. A day in the park looks positively like Arcadia. Kent Turner
October 10, 2008