Life Is Sweet (1991)

hyped garbage

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

I try not to rate a movie with a high score, usually because in a film there is more things to evaluate than a plot, (the thing most people let themselves get influenced by). That's why most of movies don't go up a 7 or 8, in the better of cases: the great majority is not worth it.This film is charming and couldn't give it less than an eight. The screenplay is just so well-written, you never feel you are bored while watching, despite the absurd of the simplicity in the story: a family, two loving parents, a lame friend, a swindler and a couple of interesting twins. Really, what makes this film awesome, is the mix between these facts, the little things that happen to all of them and the visuals, (I would also mention the outstanding acting performances). The camera work and edition is professionally done, as well. Mike Leigh, despite being more a ''theatrical person'' (you can notice this tendency all throughout the film), and being this his 4th movie, well, he knew how to use the cinematographic tools he had in a particular artistic way.

The first question is: is the title ironic or sincere? I think for Leigh there's not an ironic bone in his body, and this is despite (or maybe because?) of the fact that his film, like many of his others, are people who may be pleasant and joyful and get by just fine but others are probably, maybe, definitely, messed up. But he loves all of the people in the worlds he creates - and, as has been reported to death, how his process is one where he makes it totally inclusive with the actors as they develop characters and the scenarios over a year or so - and it's usually a matter of... how does this person realize the other needs or wants something, desperately, simply? Life is Sweet is a wonderful example of the kind of film Mike Leigh is usually associated with making, and is deeper and (in a good way) more difficult emotionally than you might expect on first glance.The family includes Wendy, the mother (Steadman), father Andy (Broadbent), and twin daughters Natalie and Nicola (Skinner and Harrocks respectively). They seem to be a fairly conventional (lower) middle class family in a town in England, where Andy has some big ideas for a food truck he buys sort of on a whim from slightly-shady, so-dated-in-a-windbreaker Stephen Rea (so unlike how I've seen him in other parts, which is great), and Wendy, who sometimes works with kids but also tries to help friend(?) of the family Aubrey (Timothy Spall in a delightfully daffy, sometimes angry and occasionally drunk performance unlike any I've seen before) who tries to open his own restaurant, is the kind of person you or I know who laughs at a lot of things. Sometimes, whether intentional or unintentional, that includes the daughter Nicola who is, really, the depressed and tortured heart of the film.Oh, she might bring some of it on herself, one might say, seeing as she's an anorexic/bulimic girl (only the sister seems to know she does this, hearing her vomit in her bedroom next over, or at least is the only one who asks), and from the start she comes off as, to put it lightly, a basket case. But Leigh not once, not ever, does he judge her as a filmmaker - some of the other characters might, but that's another matter, and one that creates some mild comic but also dramatic tension in some scenes - as she comes off as pushy and antagonistic, but also that she is so young and mixed up in a lot of ways, not the least sexually (her scenes with Thewlis as her sort- of-boyfriend have a sharp charge of energy between them, how he's with her and why he puts up with her, or why she allows him to say the things he does, is fascinating). And Harrocks gives it her all, and I'm sure that delighted Leigh to see what lengths she as well as Spall and, in their own way, Broadbent and Steadman went in their performances. The main problem that the characters face here, or at least the mother does as someone who has emotional intelligence but not always the words to communicate well, is how to speak how they're actually feeling. It's not just a British thing either, it's universal for parents to not always know what to say to their children, if they're not as functional as they're expected or a bit "unusual." But it's more than that too; throughout the film we're seeing people trying to have what they want, whether it's the father with his food truck (it's a fixer-upper, and some day he'll do it, maybe), or Aubrey with his restaurant that (on the first night, but we may think it'll be this way for a while) no one comes in, or some others. The focus is small and the character moments are all intimate in one way or another, and it eventually does build to a very dramatic moment between mother and daughter. What's remarkable is that it's not the kind of ending that might come in a lessor (maybe American?) movie where things end neat and tidy; there's the sense that there is still a *lot* of work to be done between these characters, and this family, and with Nicola and her uncertainty about herself (whether that involves therapy who can say), but it's really about... start trying, and work from there. One last thing - Dick Pope was cinematographer on this. Seeing this just a week after seeing Baby Driver again... this man was versatile as all get out. What an amazing eye and gift with a camera; and here it's subtle because it's so character driven, but every moment has motivation, every time he and Leigh stay on a character or two characters it matters.

I've only seen Life is Sweet twice—first when it came out fifteen years ago and again just last night. The last fifteen years certainly haven't dimmed my memory about what a wonderful movie this is.It's funny that the only two people in this critics' forum who don't like the movie are American. I'm not American-bashing, but many American films have the big names, pretty faces and lots of explosions. You generally won't find these in a Mike Leigh movie. Instead you'll find wonderful stories, great characters and perfect acting (I could watch Jim Broadbent make toast and reading the morning newspaper).For some reason this movie really resonated with me over the years and I remembered so many little details that spoke volumes. The Decalogue, for example. Mike Leigh's movies are brilliant in terms of Decalogue (Jim Broadbent's "That is an evil spoon" has to be one of the greatest lines in cinema history).Life is Sweet isn't a happy movie, but it is a joy to watch.

I'm starting to think that Mike Leigh could make a story aboutboring people (like me) posting reviews online and make it and them interesting. I don't think I'm being overly sentimental when Isay that, sometimes we need films that show us that, on thewhole, people are good and trying to do the best they can in adifficult world. I don't see many directors who are willing to showus flawed characters who fight through difficulties with heart andhumor and work things out without the aid of some ridiculousdevice. Leigh is brave enough, creative enough and has enoughrespect for his audience to show us, in Life is Sweet, thatsometimes caring and patience with those we love is our onlychance and what we are generally stuck with anyway.