Toronto and NYFF. Happy-Go-Lucky.

"On the outskirts of Mike Leigh's blissful Happy-Go-Lucky [site] lie child abusers, stalkers and supremacists, homeless, hairy troglodytes, school bullies, back problems, driving perils, and a series of crumbling relationships no amount of bourgeois BBQs and videogaming seem quite prepared to rectify (quite the reverse," writes David Phelps in the Auteurs' Notebook.

"[S]tarry-eyed heroine, Poppy (Sally Hawkins), takes driving lessons with a trait-by-trait carbon copy of Travis Bickle (Eddie Marsan). What's funny, if it's funny, is people's ability to take it all for granted and move on. Like so many comedies, Happy-Go-Lucky shows us how to accept the world, if not destroy it, as a terrible, terrible place."

"As an equal fan of Leigh's bleak early television work and his delightful Life is Sweet and Topsy-Turvy, I had High Hopes for his new film," writes Ella Taylor. "But despite the elfin charm of Sally Hawkins, who plays an elementary schoolteacher with a sunny outlook that repels all adversity, Happy-Go-Lucky struck me as another form of condescension to the lower orders, only in primary colors."

"Leigh and Hawkins may have overly conceived this eccentric schoolteacher, but it should be noted that they're dealing within the realm of fantasy—trying to show how hard it is for people to retain their essential goodness in spite of the indignities small and large that subsume their lives," writes Ed Gonzalez in Slant. Without certain "striking, borderline frightening scenes that sketch the girl's selfless devotion to others, it would have been too easy to write Happy-Go-Lucky as a lark. With them, the film soars."

"[F]or all its surface innocuousness, Happy-Go-Lucky builds to a climax that's at once utterly predictable and deeply moving," writes Vadim Rizov at the House Next Door. "It kind of ruined my day. It works because the outlines are banal but the performances are phenomenally lived-in."

"Perhaps it all simply would have worked better as a musical," suggests Pacze Moj.

Stephanie Zacharek talks with Leigh about for Salon.

Earlier: Reviews from the UK.

Update, 9/23: "[T]he synthesis of gags and melodrama seems strained in Happy-Go-Lucky: much of the narrative trajectory, slight as it is, appears recycled from earlier, better Leigh films," writes Richard Porton in Cinema Scope. "[S]ince Leigh appears to have more affinities with his gloomier protagonists than with inveterate optimist Poppy, Happy-Go-Lucky, is, good intentions notwithstanding, a rather fraudulent and half-hearted enterprise."

Update, 9/24: "Leigh's portrait sporadically flirts with mushiness, yet melodramatics are avoided thanks in part to the director's restraint as well as, more fundamentally, to Hawkins' marvelously unpretentious performance, which initially seems destined for corny shtick but is imbued with disarmingly genuine heart that's made complicated and authentic by her sporadic flashes of seriousness and sadness," writes Nick Schager.

Update, 9/26: The filmlinc blog has some online viewing: Leigh and Hawkins at their press conference.

Updates, 10/3: William Georgiades talks with Leigh for the Los Angeles Times.

Online listening and viewing tips. Ed Champion talks with Leigh; Filmcatcher interviews Hawkins and Leigh, while IFC has video from the press conference.

Posted by dwhudson at September 22, 2008 11:00 AM