Happy Go Lucky

Happy go lucky
Starring: Sally Hawkins, Eddie Marsan, Alexis Zegerman
Directed by: Mike Leigh


Sally Hawkins plays Poppy, the lead character of Mike Leigh’s new film “Happy go lucky”. Poppy is naturally, irrepressibly and occasionally annoyingly happy – all the time. Her bike gets stolen, and she smiles, someone is rude to her and she laughs, comes up with a joke. Living in London’s East End it’s difficult to maintain this personality quirk, but she does. Her motivations for what is clearly a choice on how to behave in her world are unclear, but the effects are not. People respond to her in extremely different ways – if they know her its with affection at her comments and jokes, if they don’t, they usually avoid eye contact and interaction – an interesting but sad observation on our society and how the more connected to each other we have become the more insular we want to be.
It’s quite a change from a typical Mike Leigh film – the world Poppy is from is quite a rough, depressed area still, typical East London, typical Mike Leigh, but the main characters aren’t. Poppy considers herself a very lucky girl, even though by ‘societies standards’ – 30 years old, unmarried, not on ‘the property ladder’ – she may not be considered as such.
A lot of the film takes place in small confined areas, her flat, her flatmates car, or during her driving lessons, which consume a considerable amount of the film. The driving lessons are a particularly tense time and the enclosed area and tight shots heighten the tensions which are simmering over between Poppy and her potentially psychotic, stalking driving instructor. He finds Poppy, as most strangers seem to, annoying, childish, vacuous, and doesn’t hesitate to tell her so. The conflict between their personalities leads to an altercation between the two, and one sees Poppy’s not as vacuous as she initially appears.
Poppy’s constant happiness can be grating at first, but one warms to her during the course of the film. Not a ‘feel good’ film as such, more a study on how one person’s decision to live their life in a certain way can affect not only her life, but those around her.


Zoe – You can’t make everyone happy Poppy.
Poppy – Yeah, but there’s no harm in trying is there?