‘We don’t hate you! We bloody love you, you stupid girl!‘
Writer-director Mike Leigh is probably best known for his 1996 smash Secrets & Lies. Six years earlier, as cinema was unknowingly entering into a decade that would redefine the British film industry, Leigh dropped Life is Sweet. Whilst it hasn’t endured the same way that Secret & Lies has, it remains a powerful and unique piece of work…
Wendy (Alison Steadman) and Andy (Jim Broadbent) are a happily married couple living in a working-class London suburb. Their twin daughters Nicola (Jane Horrocks) and Natalie (Claire Skinner) treat their parents with a kind of affectionate contempt. Family friend Aubrey (Timothy Spall) is in the process of opening a doomed restaurant. Put short, this is a tableau of working-class life at the end of the ’80s.
Leigh utilises larger-than-life characters in order to cover issues as varied as bulimia, alcoholism and sexual politics. Despite the fact that the characters can be cartoonish, there are moments of real poignancy here. An honest conversation between a mother and her wayward child. A glimmer of tenderness between a young woman and her lover (portrayed by David Thewlis in an early role). The whimsical Parisian score betrays the very real issues at the core of Life is Sweet and the end product is a film that is strange, funny and authentic.
Kitchen sink dramas can be bleak. With Life is Sweet, Leigh has incorporated all of the pathos of the work of Shane Meadows or Ken Loach with none of the gloom. A life-affirming working-class fable that deserves a bigger audience.