by Sarah Cope

A new Mike Leigh film is always an exciting prospect, and Another Year is perhaps one of his finest works yet. It features many of his usual actors (Imelda Staunton, Ruth Sheen , Philip Davis), but it is Lesley Manville, who has featured in many of Leigh’s previous films, who this film really belongs to. Her portrayal of the nervy, desperate Mary completely overshadows the rest of the characters, but perhaps this is not entirely accidental.

Middle-aged, happily married couple Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen) are the nucleus around whom the film is built, but their very stable, unremarkable life makes them less interesting than their unstable, unhappy friends. Their home, which is itself almost a character in the film, is a port in a storm for the lovelorn and the bereaved.

In a deeply disquieting scene, Lesley Manville’s Mary flirts outrageously with Tom and Gerri’s 30-year-old son, Joe (Oliver Maltman), who she has known since he was 10. Rather than being embarrassed by her drunken advances, Joe, for reasons unknown, returns the flirtation. The pain and vulnerability in Mary’s eyes, which continually well-up with barely-supressed tears, and which Leigh shrewdly focuses on repeatedly, is almost unbearable to watch as she almost pleads for love.

This is a film which highlights how painful it can be for deeply unhappy people to witness happiness in those around them. When Jo finds a girlfriend, Mary’s reaction is enough to almost finish her friendship with his parents, who she in fact relies upon for support and companionship. Her friendship with Gerri is particularly interesting, with Gerri assuming the role of counsellor, which is in fact her profession. “As long as we’re friends I’ll be all right,” cries Mary, whilst the viewer wonders how mutually satisfying this friendship really is.

The story is told, as the title suggests, over the course of a year, and the cinematography beautifully portrays the changing of the seasons. The scene where four of the men play golf in the summer was gloriously shot, its brightness and colour contrasting greatly with a funeral scene in winter, which almost looked as though it had been filmed in black and white.

There was barely a duff note in the entire film, and with Another Year Leigh may well have reached the high point of what has already been an outstanding career.

On general release.

by Sarah Cope

It’s incredible that in 2010 a film can find something entirely new to say about family dynamics, but The Kids Are All Right does just that. Lesbian couple Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) have two kids, the rather oddly-named Laser (Josh Hutcherson) and Joni (Mia Wasikowska), now in their teens. The children were conceived by donor sperm, and now that Joni is eighteen, the offspring decide to contact their father.

He turns out to be the rather hapless though likeable Paul (Mark Ruffalo), who, on hearing his sperm had been used by a lesbian couple, tells his daughter “Right on. Cool. I love lesbians!”

The first meeting of the kids with their biological father is pitch perfect, with no one knowing quite how to act in what is unchartered territory in terms of social gatherings. The awkwardness is palpable.

The depiction of Nic and Jules, (or “Momses” as the kids collectively refer to them – different family set-ups require new words!) was at first, I thought, somewhat laboured. In order to stress the long-term nature of their relationship, and in order to establish them as a believable couple, the film somewhat over-emphasised the domestic details of their existence in a way I am not sure would have been deemed necessary had the couple been heterosexual. Look, the film seems to be saying, lesbian couples bicker in the same way straight couple do – who’d have thought it?

However, the film really picks up after the first meeting of the couple with their sperm donor. The audience are asked to imagine what it must be like to encounter, for the very first time, the man whose baby you have carried and whose child you have raised. Unnerving, to say the very least. When Jules and Nic recount how they met, clearly a story they have told many times and which they enjoy recounting together (much to their children’s embarrassment), it one of the most believable and enjoyable moments of the film.

The appearance of Donor Dad Paul, though, will drive a wedge between the couple, in a way that is entirely unexpected (to say any more would mean this review would require a ‘spoiler alert’!). As Nic puts it “I feel like he’s taken over my family”, and when she finally decides, over dinner at Paul’s, that “I like this guy”, observant viewers will note she is actually pointing at Paul with her steak knife.

Nic’s wordless shock when she makes a discovery about the extent to which Paul has taken over her family is the strongest moment in the film, and if Bening wins Best Actress at next year’s Academy Award (she is hotly tipped to be nominated) she will deserve it for this scene alone.

On general release.