Mike Leigh’s Another Year is split into the four seasons commencing with Spring. Set in London, the film opens on a doctor’s consultation with a depressed housewife who is then referred to a counsellor. The tone is set. In true Leigh style, the nitty-gritty, warts and all of everyday life are encapsulated in the patient, Janet's (Imelda Staunton), expression. She is being gently encouraged by her counseller, Gerri (Ruth Sheen), to reveal what is bothering her and is therefore the possible cause of her insomnia. Janet’s response is to give nothing away - her resolve is typical of the British stiff upper lip. Don’t ask, don’t tell.

The story moves through the seasons and we meet Gerri’s husband Tom (Jim Broadbent), a geologist, and their son, Joe (Oliver Maltman), who is a community lawyer. They are a good, decent hard-working family who open their door to their best friends, Mary (Lesley Manville), Gerri’s work colleague, and Ken (Peter Wright), an old school chum of Tom’s. Both are totally dysfunctional, borderline alcoholics who, in some ways, regard the family as a safe haven, a place where they can open up and dump some of their anxieties.

And, dump they do… Mary is the loneliest person on earth and Manville’s performance is sensational. You feel every ounce of sympathy for her train-wreck of an existence. She is locked in a poor-me syndrome which is exacerbated by her age, her meagre finances and her totally pessimistic attitude to ‘her lot’ in life. Ken on the other hand is looking for a different life, but doesn’t have the courage to take the plunge and make changes. He finds solace in the abuse of cigarettes and alcohol.

Meanwhile, Tom and Gerri (yes, jokes are made) go about their daily routine, tending to their allotment, tending to their son and tending to their friends. They are children of the revolution, baby-boomers, who remember partaking in the occasional joint, attending the occasional rock festival and listening to The Beatles, with a bit of Elvis on the side.

Leigh puts his characters and his audience through the wringer. In this bitter/sweet drama, he succeeds in jolting us out of our seats, staring family, friendship, love, joy, sadness, hope, despair, companionship and, above all, loneliness, right in the face while time passes, as it does, year after year after year. This is one of his finest works - don’t miss it.

// SALT



Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen) have found a kind of blissful contentment. Happily nestled into their autumn years, they do what most people do with work they like and leisure time spent together cheerfully pottering around the garden or kitchen. Theirs is a happy life. If only the same could be said of their friends, notably alcoholic Ken (Peter Wight) and chaotic Mary (Lesley Manville). Both hopelessly and unhappily single, they hang off Tom and Gerri in the hope that some good might rub on into their own lives. But life doesn't work that way.

Mike Leigh's Oscar-nominated screenplay tackles one of the most difficult relationships one can ever have, tending to the needs of basket-case, charity friends; the one you can't bring yourself, nor probably want, to cut loose. What plays out over the course of a fairly ordinary year is workaday – their son Joe brings home a girlfriend, Tom's sister-in-law dies. Yet the way in which Leigh folds these events into his character's lives gives them significant weight and importance. Which, of course, they have. This capacity to tease elemental human truths from elemental human activity is a style that defines his best films – Secrets And Lies, Vera Drake and Happy Go Lucky among them. Framed with a remarkably honest sense of reality, the simple story takes on Shakespearean qualities as the couple dole out comfort and stern advice in equal measure.

Cinematography is rich and performances strong with that of Manville's Mary the most striking. Her sense of urgency and desperation is alarming, often frightening in its intensity; reminiscent of Scott, Happy Go Lucky's terrifying driving instructor, though here swapping acute anger for optimistic melancholy. But Mary is not alone. Ken cuts a doleful figure, miserably eating and drinking his way to an early grave while newly widowed Ron, Tom's brother, is next to find consolation under their comforting wing. What sounds like grim pickings finds a light touch as Leigh explores the notion of happiness from a new angle. He even makes you smile, something both Tom and Gerri would approve of.

// COLIN FRASER
moviereview colin fraser film movie australia review critic flicks another year another year