Happy-Go-Lucky

It was another very quiet and very dull day at work. I left work fairly sharply, at a little after four and headed up to the cinema to meet my mum.

We were a little early and so we had a drink at a bar next to the cinema. The film that we saw was called Happy-Go-Lucky, written and directed by Mike Leigh. The film tells the story of Poppy Cross (played by Sally Hawkins) a 30 year old primary school teacher who lives and works in London. She loves her job, her friends and her freedom, and is constantly cheerful, happy and upbeat, come what may. The film follows her though a few weeks in her life as she goes out with her friends, discovers one of her pupils is being bullied at home, learns flamenco dancing and starts taking driving lessons with a miserable, angry and obviously unhinged misanthrope named Scott (Eddie Marsan). There is no real story to the film, but there are bits of it that are very funny. How you respond to it may depend on how you respond to a character like Poppy who is perpetually cheerful and good-natured.

After the film I went back to my parent's house for some dinner. The new issue of Sight and Sound magazine had arrived in the mail for me. The main feature this month was "Cinema of the New Europe" about the resurgence in Eastern European cinema.