Happy-Go-Lucky
Mike Leigh | UK | 2008
118 min

Happy-Go-Lucky, the film, also accurately describes the wide eyed character of Poppy played with wonderful, improvised glee by Sally Hawkins. At the start of the film her bike is stolen while she visits a bookstore and all she can muster on finding out is “I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye”. The list of life’s adversities she encounters by the end of the film are realistic though never cruel, but the one that brings out her appeal is her relationship with her driving instructor – a hate spewing Londoner smitten by her and whose angst reflects both a commoners road rage and working class torment.

Director Mike Leigh relishes his subjects’ situations but never scrutinizes them. Poppy is indiscriminately unique. I haven’t quite seen a movie character like her in ages. She has the blithe of a Julie Andrews character from the 60′s and admittedly, watching her for the entire length of the film is also very irritating, in much the same way that overtly optimistic people in real life are sometimes taken at face value to be unremarkable, shallow and probably one-dimensional. Leigh gracefully overcomes most, if not all, of these misgivings by revealing the characters depth in many situations – from how she handles herself during Flamenco dance lessons, to her confronting a school bully where she is a teacher but mostly in her weekly driving classes.

If anything, the film, largely a collection of everyday mundane non-events meant to flush out the challenges of being positive and optimistic, made me realize how more difficult it is to keep cheery in the face of misfortune. Our movies have given us far too many misanthropes – last year most memorable portrayals were Javier Bardem’s hydraulic air gun carrying killer and Daniel Day Lewis’ miserable oil baron and this year we’ve seen the brilliant, self-destructionist Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler. In their midst, Poppy is like a much needed breath mint.