Life Is Sweet (film)
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| Life is Sweet | |
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| Directed by | Mike Leigh |
| Produced by | Simon Channing-Williams |
| Written by | Mike Leigh |
| Starring | Alison Steadman Jim Broadbent Claire Skinner Jane Horrocks Timothy Spall |
| Music by | Rachel Portman |
| Cinematography | Dick Pope |
| Editing by | Jon Gregory |
| Distributed by | Forum Distribution |
| Release date(s) | September 11, 1991 (USA) March 22, 1991 (UK) |
| Running time | 103 min. |
| Country | UK |
| Language | English |
| Gross revenue | US$1,516,414 (USA)[1] |
| Preceded by | High Hopes |
| Followed by | A Sense of History |
Life Is Sweet is a 1991 British film directed by Mike Leigh, starring Jim Broadbent, Alison Steadman, Claire Skinner, Jane Horrocks and Timothy Spall. Leigh's third cinematic film, it was his most commercially successful title at the time of its original release.[1] The essentially comic story follows the fortunes of a lower-middle-class North London family over a few weeks in one summer.
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[edit] Plot
Andy, a senior chef in a large London catering facility, buys a dilapidated fast-food van from a disreputable acquaintance named Patsy (Stephen Rea). He plans to clean, restore and put it into service on a local fast-food round. Wendy (his hard-working, good-natured and innuendo-prone wife) is sensibly sceptical about the project but understands her husband's ambitions. Their twin 22 year old daughters (Natalie and Nicola) have profoundly different attitudes: tomboyish Natalie (who works as a plumber's mate) thinks it's a good idea if it'll make her father happy, whereas the bitter, shut-in Nicola contemptuously and typically dismisses Andy as a "Capitalist!" Late at night, an anguished Nicola binges on chocolate and snacks, then forces herself to vomit. Natalie - awake in the next room - overhears her.
Aubrey, a hyperactive but emotionally labile family friend, is opening a Parisian-themed restaurant named The Regret Rien. Wendy accepts a part-time job as waitress in the restaurant, but her and Andy's initial confidence in the scheme is undermined by Aubrey's unorthodox approach to the interior decor (a cluttered, half-realised combination of outmoded French cliches, such as a bicycle in the bay window, and of tasteless Victoriana such as a stuffed cat's head framed by broken accordian sconces) and by his menu. His singularly grotesque interpretation of the excesses of nouvelle cuisine includes dishes such as Saveloy on a bed of Lychees, Liver in Lager and Pork Cyst.
During the afternoon, whilst the rest of the family are out at work, Nicola's lover (unnamed, played by David Thewlis) comes to the family home to have sex with her. It appears that Nicola can only be aroused by a combination of light bondage and the consumption of chocolate spread from her chest - a practice to which he only reluctantly agrees to. He ultimately loses patience with her, accusing her of being "a bit vacant" and incapable of having a sincere, adult conversation or allowing herself to enjoy his companionship. She calls his bluff and loses: frustrated but resolute, he leaves her and her fragile emotional state deteriorates even further.
The opening night of The Regret Rien is a disaster. Aubrey forgot to advertise the opening of the restaurant, with the result that no customers turn up. Aubrey gets hopelessly drunk, tells Wendy that he fancies her, starts taking his clothes off and passes out. Wendy is forced to deal not only with him but with his glum, passive and infatuated sous-chef, Paula (Moya Brady).
Meanwhile, Andy and Patsy have gone to their local pub, where Andy gets uncharacteristically but emphatically drunk and ends up sleeping inside the decrepit fast-food van in his driveway. Wendy returns home from the disastrous opening night of Aubrey's restaurant to find him there: unnerved by her bizarre evening, for the first time she loses her temper with the whole family.
Phlegmatic and dry-humoured Natalie enjoys her unconventional work as a plumber, the simple pleasures of a pint and a game of pool, and dreams of visiting the USA. In contrast, the fidgety and isolated Nicola becomes increasingly agitated, aggressive and reclusive, and Wendy finally confronts her. During the course of their long and anguished confrontation, Wendy makes it clear to Nicola that she is deeply worried about her, for example, wondering why she makes no attempt to get involved with the causes she claims to believe in. She tells Nicola of the struggle she and Andy endured to care for their baby daughters - how it meant she never went to college and Andy working in a "job he hates." It emerges that during an earlier phase of Nicola's anorexia, she almost starved to death. Ashamed and angry, Nicola is convinced that Wendy and the rest of the family must hate her: instead, as the exasperated Wendy tells her, "We don't hate you! We bloody love you, you stupid girl!" and leaves the room, deeply upset. The brittle behavioural armour with which Nicola has used to protect her psyche is now shattered and she breaks down sobbing.
Meanwhile, Andy is seen running his kitchen at work with energy and authority but slips on a spoon, breaking his ankle. Wendy receives the news with a characteristic mixture of sympathy and amusement. She drives him home from the hospital; aided by Natalie she makes him comfortable, and then goes to see Nicola, still in her room. Mother and daughter reconcile.
The film ends with Natalie and Nicola sitting peacefully in the evening sunshine in the back garden. Natalie observes that Nicola must own up to her parents about her bulimia. She then asks Nicola "D'you want some money?" and Nicola accepts gratefully, the first time in the film where she has accepted an offer of help.
[edit] Cast
- Alison Steadman as Wendy. She works in a baby clothing shop and teaches a dance class to young children. She is the emotional core of the family and talks continually, keeping up an amused running commentary on everything around her, but concerned about the welfare of her family, especially her troubled daughter Nicola. She loves her husband, but recognises that he lacks entrepreneurial spirit; she describes him as having "two speeds, slow and stop".
- Jim Broadbent as Andy, Wendy's husband and a professional head cook in an industrial kitchen. Andy is presented as a loving but slightly ineffectual husband and father, fond of tinkering in his shed and buying broken things which he plans to get around to fixing at some unspecified future date. By contrast, the scenes depicting Andy at work show him as a highly competent executive chef.
- Claire Skinner as Andy and Wendy's daughter Natalie, a plumber who spends her leisure time playing snooker and drinking with her male workmates. She never shows any interest in dating or romance, but reads travel brochures about the USA in her room at night. Natalie is described by her mother as "happy", but she is the only principal character in the film who never smiles.
- Jane Horrocks as Nicola, Natalie's twin sister. Nicola is unemployed, extremely thin, smokes continually, eats her meals separately from the others and criticises the behaviour of everyone around her, largely on the grounds of a superficial kind of political correctness. Her favourite expression is "Bollocks!" It is revealed early on that Nicola is bulimic; she keeps a locked suitcase full of snacks and sweets under her bed, and late at night she binges on them and then makes herself vomit.
- Timothy Spall as Aubrey, an old friend of the family. Aubrey is nervous, fidgety and has poor impulse control, often randomly destroying nearby objects; the other way he vents his tensions is by playing the drums very badly. He considers himself a culinary "genius", but his cooking is eccentric to the point of inedible, and he lacks many basic social skills; early on in the film he gives a pineapple to Wendy on the grounds that he suspects it to be "on the turn". He appears to harbour unrequited lusts for both Wendy and Nicola.
[edit] Production
The film was a co-production between British Screen Productions, Channel Four Films and Thin Man Films, a production company created by Mike Leigh and producer Simon Channing-Williams.[2] This was the first release by Thin Man, who have produced all Leigh's films since Life Is Sweet.[3]
The script was developed by Leigh and the cast, employing his established practice of collectively improvising and rehearsing for several weeks prior to actual shooting. For example, Aubrey's bizarre recipes were devised by Leigh and Timothy Spall over the course of a single evening, and then checked for plausibility with a professional chef, who advised them about which ones were technically impossible to prepare; all the ones that appear in the film are, as Leigh put it, "all feasible, gross as it sounds."[4]
David Thewlis, who played Nicola's anonymous lover, was disappointed at being given such a small role. Leigh promised him that the next time he considered Thewlis for a role in a film, "he'd be given a fair slice of the pie."[5] Sure enough, Thewlis' next role in a Leigh film was his award-winning performance as the lead character Johnny in Naked.[6]
The film was shot entirely on location in Enfield, Middlesex, U.K..[7]
[edit] Critical reception
The film received mostly favourable reviews. The Guardian film reviewer awarded the film seven stars out of a possible ten.[8] Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times commenting that in spite of the constraints of independent film production, the film was "as funny, spontaneous and free as if it had been made on a lark by a millionaire".[9] Hal Hinson of the Washington Post called the film "sublime" and "gently brilliant".[10] Desson Thompson of the same paper agreed, praising Leigh for discovering "the tragic beauty of the mundane".[11]
[edit] Cultural references
Aubrey's restaurant The Regret Rien is named after the 1956 song Non, je ne regrette rien by Charles Dumont and Michel Vaucaire, made famous by French singer Edith Piaf.
Andy often speaks in comic voices, at one point uttering the out-of-context line "He's fallen in the water!". This was the catchphrase of Little Jim, a recurring character from the 1950s BBC radio comedy programme The Goon Show.[12]
Patsy is a supporter of Tottenham Hotspur football club. According to Leigh this was a source of some discomfort to Stephen Rea who played the character, since Rea is a supporter of the team's long-term rivals Arsenal.[13]
[edit] Awards and nominations
- Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards, USA, 1991: Best Supporting Actress - Jane Horrocks
- Independent Spirit Awards, USA, 1992: Best Foreign Film (nominated)
- Bodil Awards, Denmark, 1992: Best European Film
- London Critics Circle Film Awards, UK, 1992: British Film of the Year
- National Society of Film Critics Awards, USA, 1992
- Best Film
- Best Actress - Alison Steadman
- Best Supporting Actress - Jane Horrocks[14]
[edit] DVD
The Region 2 DVD of Life Is Sweet was released on 11 February 2002.
[edit] External links
[edit] References
- ^ a b Life Is Sweet (1991) - Box office / business
- ^ Raphael, Amy (2008). Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh. London: Faber & Faber. p. 384. ISBN 978-0-571-20469-4.
- ^ Raphael, p. 207
- ^ Raphael, p. 217
- ^ Raphael, p. 211
- ^ Naked (1993) - Awards
- ^ Raphael, p. 209
- ^ Life Is Sweet | Film | guardian.co.uk
- ^ Life Is Sweet :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews
- ^ ‘Life Is Sweet’ (R)
- ^ ‘Life Is Sweet’ (R)
- ^ The Goon Show Site - Goons Characters
- ^ Raphael, p. 213
- ^ Life Is Sweet (1991) - Awards
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