Watched “Life is Sweet” again last week, overjoyed to find that the Criterion Channel had it (for which I’ve had a subscription now for a year or two, and before that FilmStruck). Of all Mike Leigh’s films it remains the most moving to me. In retrospect I can see why it’s so relatable: a dysfunction in the family, a hidden incident, or something on some level ignored, and yet this very unexceptional family muddles through it. It’s got this light touch, this affection for all the characters, this indwelling love, and yet Nicola’s bulimia is the thing that exists at its painful center. Nicola is played very over-the-top in that typical Mike Leigh way, a caricature, but just acceptable enough and understandable enough a diversion for the disease she believes she’s keeping from everyone.
As a bookend for that, the cartoonish character, Aubrey, brilliant comic invention of actor Timothy Spall, has an actual madness very close to the surface, revealed to be darker and darker as the movie progresses (and yet never allowed to totally leave the realm of comedy). He’s a foil for Andy and Wendy’s (husband and wife’s) goodness, as they are only too eager to help him and overlook his absurdity (and danger), or appreciate him in spite of it.
Stephen Rea’s character, Patsy, is also this kind of lurking soft menace as a proxy for the world at large. He is also more or less accepted and trusted (if under comic protest, by Wendy). Ultimately theirs is a sensible relationship to the world, but the film very much sticks with them and we see everything through them.
I should also mention David Thewlis’s role as the hidden boyfriend, which is (in two scenes total) to reveal Nicola’s pathology (her secret) and to ultimately sober her to it. The scene where he berates her for her false feminism may be the one transparently forced scene in the movie.
There is not a scene in this movie that I find superfluous or not endlessly fascinating, both for the ensemble of actors and the way they relate to each other, essentially as real as anything in a documentary, and for the feelings and atmosphere it evokes of a not particularly ambitious family unit at that point where the family should soon be sending off its children, and is maybe overdue for that.
Imagine my thrill to find on Criterion Channel a version of the film with Mike Leigh’s commentary (originally I suppose for DVD, given about 7 or 8 years ago). I absolutely ate it up. I imagine it would be like some jazz enthusiast being given a glimpse in to some famed recording session or arcane live concert. Everything he commented on was a joy to listen to, from his favorite scenes (including the climactic scene with Wendy and Nicola, which he said brought tears to his eyes every time–as it does to mine) to his declaring the “Regret Rien” without question his most outlandish “doomed” creation. He clearly expressed his discomfort (either at the time, but certainly now) at the bulimia scene and the chocolate sex scene). It was particularly interesting to hear him also voice some possible unease with his treatment of Aubrey’s character as something to laugh at, when clearly he was showing a pathology of some kind. He didn’t come out and flat out regret it, yet it did sound as if he were struggling a bit to defend the savagery of the depiction.
Anyway, as he was winding up the commentary, he got around to assessing the film and began by saying something about favorites, as in, people having favorite children, etc, (which he professed he did not, among his own two boys with Alison Steadman). But he said this film…and I was getting ready to hear him say…was his FAVORITE. But instead he said it was the LEAST FAVORITE of his films. I couldn’t believe my ears! Oh my good. so alienating to me to hear that!! And so strange to hear after he lavished so much attention over the course of 1 hr and 40 minutes talking so lovingly about the details in each scene. I can at best only speculate why it would rank so low; just underscores how uniquely we can relate to the things we make (in view of what they take out of us), and how there may be zero correspondence to how they are perceived. If I had to hazard a very wild guess, it’s that this film was the last to feature Alison Steadman [Wendy] (whom he made clear to announce he was divorced from 5 years after its making.) He referenced their other work together, “Nuts in May” and “Abigail’s Party”, but clearly these were junior efforts compared to “Life Is Sweet”. (In my opinion Abigail’s Party is the worst thing he ever did (that I’ve seen)—totally over the top and bludgeons you with repetition of worn gags without enough to redeem it).
Oh, and the score! Such a simple little French waltz. (I hadn’t connected that it was French, til Leigh said so on the commentary..but of course! and that French “connection” on some level probably further endears it to me given my own teenage years) For decades I’ve revered this simple score of Rachel Portman’s. Unfortunately it appears never to have been published as recorded score, not even in a compilation of her other work. Best one can do it grab a few minutes of the theme (clean) from Youtube which someone somehow obtained, and which I’ve done! I’ve also looked at her other film score work, summarily, and just haven’t found anything to equal it–probably because none of the other films do. The way the score morphs and warps (literally, with the saw or whatever it is, that wobbles) is so affecting. The film relies on this score to work, I think. Interestingly a lot of Leigh’s more recent stuff has been scored by a composer named Gary Yershon, and more resembles the Life is Sweet score than Rachel Portman’s other work. Gotta surmise the directorial predilection is making itself felt.
Anyway, I suspect “Life is Sweet” will remain my favorite he ever made (or will yet make), again, because the family dynamics just sing to me, and in a way, it’s got a fairy tale ending that I only wish our family had had. It’s hard to get in close to something so difficult and tangled, as I feel he did here, somehow in the context of a very funny movie. He followed it with Naked, which he highly esteems in the commentary, and I love that film too, for its ferocity and brilliance, but it just lacks the simple grace that I never fail to find in this film. Secrets and Lies is stupendous, but it does head into overwrought territory in the climax—a feeling of “oh no, that’s a bit embarrassing” on the part of the filmmaker. Happy-Go-Lucky is closer to perfect, for me. Topsy-Turvy, a whole other species and magisterial, but it’s a grand symphony, not the chamber music of “Life Is Sweet”. High Hopes feels like a worthy study, but not quite there yet with the balance of caricature and inherent emotion. Another Year, too virtuosic a character study in some way. Mr. Turner, a meditation. Peterloo, an exacting social commentary. Anyway, all very subjective. A chacun son gout.