with Jim Broadbent (The Iron Lady), Lesley Manville, Ruth Sheen, Oliver Maltman, Peter Wright, David Bradley, Martin Savage, Karina Fernandez, Michele Austin, Philip Davis, Imelda Staunton (The Girl)
Over the course of a tumultuous year, contented medical counselor Gerri (Ruth Sheen) and her geologist husband, Tom (Jim Broadbent), see their friends and relations through a series of happy events and heartbreaks -- including a birth and a death. Imelda Staunton and Oliver Maltman co-star in this character-driven ensemble dramedy from writer-director Mike Leigh (Happy-Go-Lucky, Vera Drake, Secrets and Lies).
Today I just saw the trailer again, and it made me want to write about it. This is the most unusual movie I had watched in a long time, I couldn't really understand why choosing such unusually unattractive actors, going through the seasons with nothing really relevant to it, with a boring couple and a drama queen complaining, whining the whole year long. I am used to see small stories character driven by amazing actors in France, and understand the richness of the content, the emotions. But the "British" version left me quite surprised. It is not that the people are handsome, or charming, or interesting because they have the best jobs, because they have something unique happening to them, quite the opposite. It is precisely their normality, make-up off, that takes us, make us embrace the beauty of their lives, their emptiness, their emotional journey, the richness that the actors embraced, the dept of their relationship. It is an amazing movie. And then I figured this is the same filmmaker as Secrets and Lies (Palme D'Or in Cannes Festival and Oscar of best movie — which is history in cinema, they never agree on movies), and I understood.
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