Film Review: Bright side has never looked better in 'Happy-Go-Lucky' : GoMemphis.com

Despite its three Academy Award nominations, writer-director Mike Leigh's previous feature, "Vera Drake" (2004), is almost criminally underappreciated. The movie is not just as good as anything Leigh has made in his 37-year career; it's as worthwhile as any English-language film of the past decade.

"Happy-Go-Lucky" continues Leigh's winning streak. Sally Hawkins stars as the apparent embodiment of the title adjective: a 30-year-old North London schoolteacher, nicknamed "Poppy," who responds to every situation with unfailing, chattering cheerfulness ("It makes me laugh," she says, bizarrely, about a back pain). Judging from Internet responses to the film, Poppy generates as much hatred as admiration; many moviegoers have found her unflagging brightness annoying. They wonder how Leigh could follow "Vera Drake," the dark tale of a postwar abortionist, with a "happy-go-lucky" lark.

But people who find Poppy a Pollyanna are misreading the film. Poppy is not a contradiction of but an artistic first cousin to Leigh's previous heroine, Vera Drake. Both movies tell the story of an open, fearless, compassionate and unselfish woman who is trying to craft the best life possible out of the potentially dreary material of existence. (The ritualistic use of tea as a balm and social communion also connects the films.)

Hawkins plays Poppy as a slightly daffy or perhaps even neurotic tsunami of personality, encouragement and goodwill. She's part Betty Hutton, part Jerry Lewis and part Georgy Girl. Discovering that her bike has been stolen, she laughs and says aloud: "That's just brilliant, that is." Later, she jokes: "The road to reality -- don't want to be goin' there."

A fellow teacher tells Poppy: "You celebrate chaos." Leigh revels in the celebration. An early scene in which Poppy and her flatmate, Zoe (Alexis Zegerman), construct crazy grocery-sack bird heads makes no sense until we learn the women are schoolteachers working on a class project. Like Vera Drake, Poppy seems incapable of ignoring the needy; she invites danger by confronting a homeless man, and she refuses to be cowed by the increasingly scary behavior of her frustrated, right-wing driving instructor (played by chameleonic character actor Eddie Marsan, whose presence enhanced "Vera Drake" and "Hancock").

Shot on location, "Happy-Go-Lucky" doesn't lead the viewer; Leigh allows us to interpret Poppy's behavior without the editorializing mood music, expressionistic lighting and flattering or disturbing camera angles that accompany most movie portraits. Clearly, there is no "correct" way to respond to this woman. The result is a character who is convincing and "real," and a movie that is as generous as its heroine.

"Happy-Go-Lucky" is playing exclusively at Malco's Ridgeway Four.

-- John Beifuss, 529-2394