All or Nothing

Following his opulent period piece, Topsy-Turvy, director Mike Leigh returns to more familiar terrain with this bleak drama about a dysfunctional working class family and their neighbors, many of whom live lives of drab desperation, driven by long-ingrained resentment and disappointment. Unlike the family in Leigh's Life is Sweet, they possess little sense of gallows humor to lighten their lot (although visits to a bar on karaoke night offer some respite). Leigh regular Timothy Spall stars as a mopey taxi driver, with Lesley Manville as his common-law wife, who works as a supermarket checkout clerk--together they have two children who are, by turns, withdrawn and downright hostile. The neighbors are in equally dire straits: one is a single mother whose daughter is pregnant by her bullying boyfriend, another is an over-imbibing couple held in contempt by their daughter. Is anybody happy? The genius of Leigh's films lies in the method, as he and the cast devise the characters from the inside out, developing the story out of improvisation (by the time they reach the screen, these characters are fully fleshed-out human beings). Hardly escapist entertainment, All or Nothing is ultimately life-affirming and profoundly moving. Highly recommended. (K. Lee Benson)