A ROYAL NIGHT OUT

This year sees the anniversary or many a military event, not least the Battle of Waterloo which I am covering in real time with my @relivewaterloo twitter account. One of those anniversaries is the 70th anniversary of VE or Victory in Europe day. Many of us have grown up with iconic images of that night - the crowds partying in Trafalgar Square and the Mall.  Set against that backdrop, this movie - A ROYAL NIGHT OUT - is a very mild and respectful depiction of what might have happened if Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret had been given permission to celebrate VE Day among the masses.  The movie sees them beg permission of their parents, then hit the Ritz where Princess Margaret (true to later reform) manages to give her chaperones the slip and have a fine old time everywhere from the Ritz to a Soho brothel to the Chelsea Barracks. Meanwhile, her earnest elder sister, Princess Elizabeth tries to track her down with the reluctant help of working class airman Jack.

London Film Fest 2010 Day 6 - ANOTHER YEAR

Mike Leigh returns to the Festival with a typical Mike Leigh product: heightened social realism mixing comedy and tragedy - finely observed, and improvised by the actors he often works with. The resulting film is a quality product if less memorable than, say, HAPPY-GO-LUCKY, and less scarring than SECRETS AND LIES.

The movie is set around a couple called Tom and Jerry (Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen) - solidly middle-class, nice, cheerful, and happily married. They have a 30 year old son called Joe (Oliver Maltman) who through the course of the year finds a cheerful Poppy-lite girlfriend called Katie (Karina Fernandez). They all get on really well. This stands in sharp contrast with the people who surround them and who are, by turns, taken under their wing. As the movie opens we see Jerry, a counsellor, deal with a depressed woman called Janet (a cameo from Imelda Staunton). And then, the person who really anchors the work is Lesley Manville, playing a lonely middle-aged woman called Mary, who consoles herself by drinking too much and constructing an unrealistic fantasy that Joe will ask her out. Finally, we meet Tom's elder brother Ronnie (David Bradley), recently bereaved, living numb in a grey house.

As we pass through the year, we see that Tom and Jerry are kind and sociable and create a lot of fun around them. They are constantly telling people to sit down and have a cup of tea and asking them if they are okay. But, in essence, the people who surround them aren't okay - they are miserable - miserable and pretending, badly, not to be. This is best shown by a superb little end-scene for the character Jack, played by Phil Davis. His wife is ill. Jerry asks if he's okay and he says "Well we try not to let it get us down", but then looks to the ground forlorn.  So, how far is the friendship of Terry and June enabling that delusion, by blithely making cups of tea - and how far is it making it worse by presenting these poor folk with an image of smug domestic bliss? To that end, I found ANOTHER YEAR problematic, but I think I was meant to. I also found it, despite the laughs, a profoundly depressing, if well-made, film.

Additional tags: Michele Austin, Karina Fernandez, Martin Savage, David Bradley, Oliver Maltman, Gary Yershon

ANOTHER YEAR played Cannes and Toronto 2010 and opens in the UK on November 5th. It opens in the Netherlands on November 11th; in France on December 22nd; in the US on December 31st and in Germany on January 27th 2011.

Mike Leigh retrospective - HIGH HOPES

After being involved in the successful "Play for Today" series of TV plays, Mike Leigh moved on to a feature film called HIGH HOPES. Leigh maintained his practice of gathering together a group of talented British character actors and improvising around themes of class conflict and real (as opposed to Hollywood-perfect) life. Leigh and his DP Roger Pratt depict late 1980s Britain as it really is - down at heel council flats, shambolic Victorian houses in the North of London and the occasion "fixer-upper" that has been transformed by people with a bit of money and some social aspirations. Against this suitably grimy backdrop, Leigh teases out the heart-break and drama in everyday situations.

In HIGH HOPES we have a loving but frustrated couple called Cyril and Shirley, played by the highly talented Philip Daviws and Ruth Shean. Cyril's a Marxist and, as such, in theory at least, a utopian. But in practice, Cyril is depressed by Thatcher's Britain and refuses to let his wife have a baby - the ultimate courageous and hopeful act. Shirley, by contrast, is a deeply warm and and loving persion, and is a socialist in a real sense - she cares about people and society. This manifests itself in this film by the fact that she actually listens to and cares for her ageing mother-in-law (Edna Dore) in sharp contrast to Cyril's sister and her brother in law.

The marital drama at the centre of this film, and the political question of translating abstract idealism into practical positive action are deeply compelling. I am less convinced by Leigh's handling of the class divide. His depiction of Cyril's sister Valerie (Heather Tobias) falls into the same trap as Beverly in ABIGAIL'S PARTY. Her costume, hair, accent and vocal inflections all cross the line of satire into crude caricature. The same goes for the characterisations of Cyril's mother's upper class neighbours. Despite the fact that Leigh has cast two superb character actors - Lesley Manville and David Bamber - he chooses to portray the rich neighbours as self-involved, superficial and cruel. There's no attempt to make three-dimensional characters. It's as if Leigh doesn't think the rich are worth the effort.

All in all, HIGH HOPES is a mixed bag. Cyril and Shirley's story is moving, thought-provoking, subtle and well-acted. Sadly it's surrounded by a wrapper of crude social caricature that once again feels like it's patronising the socially aspirant working-class and indifferent toward the upper= class.

HIGH HOPES was released in 1988 and won the FIPRESCI prize at Venice.