November 16, 2008

MOVIES: Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh, 2008)

Pure character study, which is fine as long as we're given a character worthy of study, which unfortunately, we aren't.

Our protagonist, Poppy (Sally Hawkins), is a happy young woman. Relentlessly, obsessively, oppressively happy. And that's all she is. I kept expecting that something would happen to test Poppy's cheerful disposition, and Leigh keeps teasing us with the possibility that something might, but it never does. Poppy goes to the doctor? Just minor back pain. One of her students is bullying? Just easily fixed home problems. Poppy wanders down a dark alley in the middle of the night to chat with the lunatic homeless guy who she hears muttering? Even that doesn't amount to anything.

There is a dark turn at the very end, but it's too little, too late. By then, I'd lost interest in Poppy's blithe, willful ignorance. (And the dark turn isn't really satisfying, as it forces one character into an extreme personality shift that is neither prepared nor believable.)

The movie's not entirely without merit; Gary Yershon's score is charming, in the best tradition of British light music. Eddie Marsan is funny as Poppy's polar opposite, a dyspeptic driving instructor who is particularly frustrated by her sunny outlook. And there's a fine small performance by Karina Fernandez as a flamenco teacher. The role's a bit of a cliche -- the angry Latina spitfire -- but Fernandez brings more personality and more life to the character in five minutes of screen time than Hawkins gives to Poppy in two hours. When the flamenco teacher left the room, I wanted to follow her; at least there was the possibility that something interesting might happen in her life.

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