home


HAPPY-GO-LUCKY
Happy Go Lucky
Polly Cross is quite possibly London's happiest woman. But can she deal with life's trials and opportunities head-on without loosing her optimism? score

4
moviereview rates films from
1 (unwatchable) to 5 (unmissable)
FIND A MOVIEREVIEW
Cast
Sally Hawkins, Alexis Zegerman, Kate O'Flyn, Eddie Marsan, Samuel Roukin

Director
Mike Leigh

Screenwriter
Mike Leigh

Country
UK

Rating / Running Time
M / 118 minutes

Australian Release
June 2008

Official Site








(c) moviereview 2006-2008
ABN 72 775 390 361
Poppy Cross (Hawkins) likes to make people happy. Not as a jolly blend of Maria von Trapp and Mother Theresa, but in a wilfully sunny manner that seeks out the shiny side of life. When her bicycle is stolen in the opening credits she laughs it off, , and is put out only because she didn’t have a chance to say goodbye. Perhaps walking will do her good. Bless.

Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky is as the title suggests, a delightful comedy of mannerisms that digs into society’s responses to the terminally cheerful. It’s a study that also plays out on audience expectation; such is Leigh’s body of work that one is expecting calamity around every corner. The cloud behind this silver lining is felt most when Poppy, a recent student of driving, presses all of her over-wrought instructor’s buttons. Scott has anger management issues that are squeezed to bursting under Poppy’s carefree disposition. “It’s not easy being you is it?” she says after a particularly rabid tantrum about the disease of multiculturalism.

Yet carefree is not to be confused with care-less. Leigh reveals a multifaceted character whose purposeful outlook marks a jumping off point to examine the intransigent negativity of urban dwellers. Poppy’s late-night encounter with a tramp is a scene of complex beauty, more eloquent though just as telling as a fraught scene with her tyrannical, pregnant sister.

Supported by her closest friend Zoe (Zegerman), Poppy is an utterly joyful and thoroughly infectious character. She’s a latter day David who tackles towering misery with a quick laugh and deprecating wit, felling unhappiness wherever it stands. Not that Zoe is entirely convinced – “are you happy?” she asks with concern. It’s a good question - can anyone be this joyful without medication? And that question, is exactly Leigh’s point.

// COLIN FRASER