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?

Juno

Starring: Elaine Page, Michael Cerys, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, Alison Janney, JK Simmons
Director: Jason Reitman
Written by: Diablo Cody


Juno Mac Guff (Elaine Page) is a bored 16 year old American girl who finds herself pregnant after a one night stand with her best friend Pauly Bleeker (Michael Cerys).
Three pregnancy tests later she realises she is ‘fo’ shizz pregnant’ as she tells her friend on her hamburger phone.
Having originally decided to have an abortion, she backs out after the trip to the abortion clinic leads her past a lone anti abortion protester from her class, who tells her that her foetus has fingernail at this stage. As a result she tells her father and her step mom, (JK Simmons and Alison Janney) of her dilemma. They are shocked and dismayed, and had been hoping when she sat them down for this talk, that she’d been ‘expelled or addicted to hard drugs or something’.
Juno decides that the best solution to her problem is to look for adoptive parents for her baby, and sets about finding them in the local news paper. The answer to her prayers is Vanessa Loring (Jennifer Garner) and Mark Loring (Jason Bateman), a local couple who’ve been trying for a baby for five years with no success. She feels immediately that they are the right people for her and signs the necessary paper work.
Juno’s nine months are difficult, dealing with the stares and whispers behind her back in school, and the physical side affects of pregnancy. However she forms a friendship with Mark, a composer, someone who’s into the same music and movies as her. Her step mother doesn’t agree with this burgeoning relationship, but Juno feels there’s nothing amiss and continues to visit him at home while his wife isn’t there.
A spanner is thrown in the works when Mark reveals to Juno that he’s going to leave Vanessa. One gets the feeling that Mark is interested in Juno but this is never explored. Juno is understandably upset by this revelation, telling him that the couple taking her baby was meant to be something beautiful and unbroken, unlike every other family.
The film deals with a lot of difficult issues, teen pregnancies, teen angst, relationships, marriage break downs, and handles them with aplomb. There are always comedic moments within the heavier issues and an excellent cast help this quirky movie to work very well.
The young Elaine Page, having been lauded in such movies as Hard Candy, carries the film well, with excellent back up from the rest of the cast. This film is along the lines of ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ and others of this indie/comedy/tragedy genre recently surfacing at the movies, and holds its own with them. Well worth a viewing.

The Darjeeling Ltd

The Darjeeling Ltd
Starring: Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson.
Director: Wes Anderson
Written by: Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola and Jason Schwartzman.


The Darjeeling Ltd is a Wes Anderson production starring Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman and Owen Wilson as three brothers brought together on a trip across India. Designed by Francis (Owen Wilson) as a ‘spiritual journey’ to bring the brothers together and to find out why they don’t trust each other any more, the trip . The three brothers haven’t seen each other since the funeral of their father a year before. Unbeknownst to Peter (Adrien Brody) and Jack (Jason Schwartzman), Francis has an ulterior motive for this trip. He wants to find their mother who moved to the Himalayas and became a nun without telling her sons.

As the brothers meet again for the first time in a year, there is confusion and resistance to the trip from Jack and Peter, and a domineering attitude from Francis. Slipping easily back into the role of the elder brother, Francis orders food for his younger siblings and tells them where to sleep. Obviously this behaviour rankles the other two, and is just one of the many issues explored during the trip. The relationship between the three slips back into the realms of childhood, with petty jealousies springing up, and each of the brothers ganging up against one another.

Each brother has his own issues to deal with. Francis has just survived a terrible motorcycle accident and spends the duration of the film with his head bruised and bandaged and walking with a limp and a cane. Peter’s wife is pregnant, and he has come on this trip without telling her, convinced he will get divorced from her at some point, although not knowing why. Jack has recently left a relationship, which is explored in the short film, ‘Hotel Chevalier’, which precedes ‘The Darjeeling Ltd’, and adds a bittersweet twist to the ending.

Most of the action takes place in the cramped cabin of ‘The Darjeeling Ltd’, the train the brothers are taking across India on their epic journey. The tight physical conditions reflect and heighten the stress and pressure between the brothers. They are carrying physical baggage - the 12 or so pieces of monogrammed luggage belonging to their late father, which reflects their heavy metaphorical baggage and the way they resolve these issues reflects the brothers mental resolutions.

Typically in Anderson’s films, the message is subtle and filled with comedic moments. An exploration of relationships, patterns of behaviour and roles between the brothers, ‘The Darjeeling Ltd’ is a slow paced, thinker’s film, interspersed with moments of great hilarity and poignancy. With cameos by Bill Murray and Angelica Hueston, it’s a classic Wes Anderson film line up, and follows similar lines of exploration as in other films by this auteur. Well worth a viewing if you like his work, and an easy introduction to his world if you don’t.

2 days in paris

Two Days in Paris
Starring: Julie Delpy, Adam Goldberg
Written by: Julie Delpy
Director: Julie Delpy

'Two days in Paris' is the story of two lovers, Delpy and Goldberg, stopping off in Delpy's native Paris for two days on their way back from Vienna. Marion (Julie Delpy) is a photographer living in New York with her interior designer boyfriend, Jack (Adam Goldberg). They have been together for two years 'a miracle in these days'. The story is narrated by Delpy and is written and directed by her also.
It features sharp witty dialogue between the hypochondriac Jack and the more relaxed Delpy, although the dynamics of their relationship change greatly over their two days.
Starting off with a synopsis of their trip from Vienna by overnight train and arriving at Delpys apartment, on the floor above her parents apartment, it follows the couple through dinner with the parents, with the Delpy translating somewhat sloppily to her non French speaking boyfriend. Marions father in particular loves to insult the 'stupid American' and is amazed when he pronounces French authors names correctly.
The tone of the film is light and moves quickly from scene to scene.
Jack has never seen the 'French' side of Marion and is astonished by aspects of her personality that have never surfaced before – attacking an ex- boyfriend in a restaurant and abusing a rascist taxi driver in the cab drive home, leading him to suggest anger management classes when the return to New York.
The major bone of contention for Jack is meeting a number of Marion's exes during the course of their two days in Paris. She tends to conceal the truth revealing her relations to them, in order to save his feelings, although of course he finds out and these lies make the situation more difficult then it probably should have been.
The relationship starts to breakdown as mistrust enters and Marion's 'French ways' baffle Jack, leading him unable to comprehend her current relationships to her exes and view everything she does with suspiscion. This suspision is validated when he discovers dirty messages from Mathieu, an ex boyfriend, on her phone, and after some investigating, using the dictionary, shows him that the majority are from January, when Marion was over in Paris without him. This leads to the final most explosive fight and the culmination of the film.
This film is fast moving, and witty, although it loses something towards the end. It is a view into relationships and the small things that can send them off course, and discusses whether we should work to save them or let them go.