Screening Date: 3 April 2025
Screening Time: 7pm
Release Date: 2024
Directors: Mike Leigh
Country: UK
Running Time: 97mins
Rating: M
Language: English
Veteran British director Mike Leigh (Secrets and Lies, Nuts in May) is at the top of his game with this astonishing and sometimes bleakly funny portrait of mental illness, family dynamics, and the devastating space between those who need help and those who cannot provide it.
The Oscar winning Marianne Jean-Baptiste stars in the role of an excruciatingly lonely character whose psychic pain is the subject of the film. Pansy is constantly angry at everyone and everything around her. She doesn’t know why. Neither do we. That it’s possible to go the distance of the whole film with her is a credit to the filmmaking team.
In real life, we’d probably run a mile. And yet…
There are no easy answers as to what makes people happy. Happiness, and its presence or absence has been one of Mike Leigh’s concerns throughout his career. Are we born happy, can we choose to be happy, is it simply the luck of the draw? This vivid, superbly acted and directed portrait of psychological pain and its collateral damage keeps us horrified and enthralled in equal measure. It is filled with a bleak humour and tiny brushstrokes of tenderness that niggle: We all have some compassion but it’s mostly a finite commodity.
“…surprisingly moving, surprisingly upsetting, and surprisingly hilarious.” Express Magazine
