About.com Rating

I fell in love with Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky. The seemingly simple story of an optimistic London elementary teacher is deceptively unassuming, told in a piecemeal, episodic structure, but by the film's gentle, perfect end, I had been seduced. It wasn't only the unforgettable character of Poppy (in a wondrous performance by Sally Hawkins) that won me over; Leigh had me appreciating the simple pleasures of life a little bit more.

Poppy is a relentlessly cheerful person. She dresses in bright colors, wears purple lace tights, big earrings, and has a kind word for everyone she meets. This includes her positively paranoid, controlling driving teacher (the hilarious and discomfiting Eddie Marsan), whom Poppy takes weekly lessons after her bike is stolen. Her good cheer threatened to be maddening, had Leigh and Sawkins not worked in concert to reveal depth beneath the overly bright facade. Poppy loves her life. She loves her friends. She loves her job. She loves her freedom. She loves her flamenco class. She cracks constant jokes, some of them funny, some less so. Poppy does not, however, live in a bubble and she's in no way immune to the harsh realities of life.

Leigh is a filmmaker known for his dark take on ordinary life. Two early Leigh films Life Is Sweet (1991) and Naked (1993) disturbed me so much I had to leave the theater. After watching Poppy get drunk and go dancing with her friends, make paper bag masks with her enthusiastic students, and fly high on a trampoline, I was afraid that he would take her happy-go-lucky spirit and crush it to pieces.

Small things begin to go wrong. Poppy's bike is stolen. Her back goes out. A student becomes a bully, beating up other kids on the playground. Her pregnant little sister attacks her for being so happy. Her driving teacher attacks her repeatedly for wearing high-heeled boots. A friend asks, aren't you lonely?

There are so many cynics out there, myself included. We think the worst to protect ourselves from disappointment. Poppy takes the other route. She sees the bad but doesn't give in to it. She is, in fact, a force of good. In one remarkably tense scene--strikingly different in tone in what comes before and after-- Poppy meets a homeless man in a park. The man is clearly crazy and most likely dangerous, but Poppy doesn't make fast tracks for the safety of a nearby crowded street; instead she sits and talks to him.

It's the same kindness that she extends to her unpleasant driving teacher. Because Poppy isn't brought down by disappointment, keeps on caring about others, and wearing her boots, her incomparable delight in life becomes a shared experience. As Poppy likes to say, it's lovely.

Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)

Starring: Sally Hawkins, Eddie Marsan, Andrea Riseborough, Sinead Matthews, Sylvestra LeTouzel
Directed by: Mike Leigh
Produced by: James Clayton (II), Gail Egan, David Garrett (II)
Running Time: 1 hr. 58 min.
Release Date: October 10th, 2008 (limited)
MPAA Rating: R for language.