To watch a movie like this again - I saw it on release and now it's a freebie with a Broadsheet - is to wonder aloud why Mike Leigh, who proves here that he CAN write an Original screenplay, felt compelled to rip off Chabrol's Une Affaire des femmes in Vera Drake. Like much, if not all of Leigh's output this is an ensemble piece and if the labels on each character are writ in Bold Face - Socialist brother, Capitalist sister, Yuppie couple etc - that's just a minor flaw in Leigh's make up, he is, after all, firmly entrenched in the Ken Loach anti-Capitalist camp but unlike Loach he does remember to entertain the audience and not just preach at them. This movie revolves around a fragmented family; brother Cyril is so steeped in Socialism that he is allowed to make schoolboyish statements like 'the day they machine gun the Royal Family is the day I'll wear a tie', whilst sister Valerie is heavily into conspicuous consumption and their old mum is slowly descending into a twilight world of short-term memory loss and confusion. Mum still lives alone in the house she's presumably occupied all her married life and where the brother and sister have been raised but the once run-down neighborhood is going up-market so the yuppie couple next door comprise a third couple. This is primarily a vehicle for an ensemble cast and each actor takes his own particular ball and runs with it whilst the director juggles those same balls. It was perhaps a mistake to let Heather Tobias play not only Abigail from Abigail's Party but play it in the style of Leigh's ex-wife Alison Steadman who created the role of Abigail but against that there will be younger viewers who never saw Abigail's Party. The sequences involving Jason Watkins peter out not quite half way through which raises the question of what they were doing there in the first place. The biggest negative is that the film is primarily a study of 'North London' types (Breaking And Entering uses the same locale)and other North Londoners will recognise and possibly sneer at themselves and their friends/neighbors but it's difficult to know what they'd make of it in Leigh's native Salford. If you like fine acting you came to the right place but if you like taut, well-made screenplays chances are you'll be disappointed.
Review of High Hopes
