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Life Is Sweet



This moving film from Mike Leigh is an intimate, invigorating, and amusing portrait of a working-class family in a suburb just north of London—an irrepressible mum and dad (Alison Steadman and Jim Broadbent) and their night-and-day twins, a bookish good girl and a sneering layabout (Claire Skinner and Jane Horrocks). In it, Leigh and his typically brilliant cast create, with extra­ordinary sensitivity and craft, a vivid, lived-in story of ordinary existence, in which even modest dreams (such as the father’s desire to open a food truck) carry enormous weight. Perched on the line between humor and melancholy, Life Is Sweet is captivating, and it was Leigh’s first international sensation.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION:

• New high-definition digital restoration, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• New audio commentary featuring director Mike Leigh
• Audio recording of a 1991 interview with Leigh at the National Film Theatre in London
• Five short films written and directed for the proposed television series Five-Minute Films
• PLUS: A booket featuring an essay by critic David Sterritt

Good to see an other Mike Leigh film joining the collection.

What about High Hopes? I was hoping for a double shot with this one. At least I was able to hold off on buying the UK blu-ray release this time (which wasn't difficult given the bad reviews).

Here's the "More!":

• Five short films written and directed for the proposed television series Five-Minute Films

The shorts are typically my favorite part of CC's Leigh releases, so this is a very welcome addition.

Yeah, the short with Jim Broadbent they put on Topsy Turvy was almost worth the price of admission on its own. I was planning on getting this anyway, but I'm more excited for it now.

The Five Minute Films are great, so this is a most welcome addition.

DVDBeaver review's been up for a while but hadn't been linked here.

Recently watched Life is Sweet on BD, for the first time ever. Extremely good film, with a good mix of humor & drama.

Spoiler

It was interesting to see that the misanthropic, reclusive shut-in Nicola had a *&%$ buddy who came to see her while her parents & sister were at work...Not quite something you'd expect from a character like this, but Leigh does a good job of surprising you in his films...

Anything involving the character Aubrey was hilarious - he seemed to me like a Napoleon Dynamite-type; i.e. someone who thinks he's cool & hip, but in actuality is hapless & nerdy. Everything leading up to & including the disastrous attempted opening of his restaurant was pure comedic gold - extremely funny:

-The name Regret Rien - I personally would never go out to eat at a place with the word "Regret" in the title, but maybe that's just me Plus, the cheap & crass decor in the restaurant would definitely make anyone going there not want to eat anything, including the stomach-turning cat head on the wall & the faux fish tank with the fake/rubber gold fish...

-When it was obvious noone would show up to the grand opening, Wendy told Aubrey that she could have passed out the fliers advertising the restaurant at her class. Aubrey stupidly replied that he didn't want just anyone coming to his place - as if he could afford to be picky

Spoiler

Aubrey's drunken & unsuccesfull attempts at seducing Wendy were hilarious; his knocking over the tables & then passing out was a fitting end to this scene...

On a more serious note:

Spoiler

The verbal confrontation that Wendy had with her daughter Nicola (near the end of the film) was quite poignant, and it was obvious it had been building up for years. It reminded me quite a bit of Maurice's blow-up at the end of Leigh's Secrets & Lies...

LavaLamp wrote:-When it was obvious noone would show up to the grand opening, Wendy told Aubrey that she could have passed out the fliers advertising the restaurant at her class. Aubrey stupidly replied that he didn't want just anyone coming to his place - as if he could afford to be picky

And of course, this makes it all the more hilarious when he stands on the street outside his restaurant and goes on a shitfaced tirade against the working class people who populate the area (and more generally, that film). The very name "Regret Rien" is unlikely to draw any working-class clientele to his establishment.

This film is subversive in the way that Happy-go-Lucky is: specifically, you have to be able to overlook a great deal in order to be happy-go-lucky or to believe that life from paycheck to paycheck and with twin 22-y-o daughters, one of whom nearly killed herself, is in any way sweet. And yet, it's part of Leigh's genius that the "happy-go-lucky" characters (in this case, the parents) can be charming, even if we wouldn't make the same life-choices. We want to believe that their unfailing cheerfulness really makes life sweet, even as most of the evidence points to the contrary.

I mean, Andy still hasn't fixed up the caravan, and now he's got an enforced 6-8 weeks off a job he hates but will have to return to. They still haven't dealt with the Aubrey situation, and it doesn't really appear that either of the daughters is any closer to resolving their issues. (Indeed, one way of reading the last scene is that Natalie is still enabling Nicola.)

Anyway, while for me Life Is Sweet wasn't on the same level as Naked or Another Year, I still enjoyed it a great deal.

jbeall wrote:

LavaLamp wrote:-When it was obvious noone would show up to the grand opening, Wendy told Aubrey that she could have passed out the fliers advertising the restaurant at her class. Aubrey stupidly replied that he didn't want just anyone coming to his place - as if he could afford to be picky

This film is subversive in the way that Happy-go-Lucky is: specifically, you have to be able to overlook a great deal in order to be happy-go-lucky or to believe that life from paycheck to paycheck and with twin 22-y-o daughters, one of whom nearly killed herself, is in any way sweet. And yet, it's part of Leigh's genius that the "happy-go-lucky" characters (in this case, the parents) can be charming, even if we wouldn't make the same life-choices. We want to believe that their unfailing cheerfulness really makes life sweet, even as most of the evidence points to the contrary.

.

I agree with this so much. I have to admit that the first Leigh production I saw, Naked, did not make me want to watch any of his other films at first. I just was not able to appreciate it. But once I saw Life is Sweet I felt that Leigh was tremendous at showing character that are treading water, or even completely over their heads, without breaking down completely and losing themselves. This is a rare quality in films, maybe Christopher Guest comes close at times. Even when Sally Hawkins has to confront her driving instructor, I still felt her character had a measured amount of control in this face-off and wanted to let him down as gently as she could. Leigh has a great understanding of how to keep the character from totally dissolving when faced with a change of power.

I have to thank Criterionforum for getting me off my funk about Naked and watching more Mike Leigh's work. When Demi Roussos passed away recently, it was the comments here on Criterionforum that made me want to track down and watch Abigail's Party- which is now one of my favorite late-70s pieces.

is the criterion really an improvement on the uk blu-ray, or are the caps at caps-a-holic misleading?