Life Is Sweet Review

22nd May 2012

Channel 4 and Film Four are re-releasing many of the key films they have been involved with since Channel 4 was launched in 1983 with Film Four as their cinema arm. Life is Sweet is one of them. Previous to this film many of Mike Leigh’s films were very dark in tone and although this one has its dark moments, it is one that is about a pair of positive characters at the centre who could easily be disappointed by life – but they struggle on regardless. The story of Life is Sweet is centered around a suburban working-class family (it was filmed entirely inEnfield) – the mother (Alison Steadman) is a housewife who works part-time at a children’s shop and as a keep fit instructor while the husband (Jim Broadbent) is a chef with plans and dreams of his own to work for himself. Between them they have two daughters: one is a tomboy (Clare Skinner) and a plumber, the other, Nicola (Jane Horrocks) a twitchy nervous bulimic waster with no sense of direction. Their lives are an endless stream of hopes and dreams which seem to fail to come to fruition – but struggle on regardless. Not a lot happens in the film and it is largely a witty conversation piece with lots of the usual naturalistic dialogue delight one would expect from a Mike Leigh penned film; the humour at times is uproariously funny. There is one particularly funny turn by Timothy Spall as the family friend Aubrey who plans to open a French restaurant (called The Regret Rien) and in a flicker of a candle his hopes and dreams are washed away.

The film has a sister in Leigh’s much later and more recent Happy-Go-Lucky (2007) – both films are led by characters who seems not to be too strong and a bit of a push-over, but in both cases they have one moment in which they address their issues and we are shocked into realizing that actually these are both strong characters with a lot of fight in them who gain their strength from their optimistic outlook on life (even the titles of both films equally demonstrate that optimism). The scene in Life is Sweet is the one in which the matriarch remonstrates with her bulimic daughter about being a waster following a disastrous night as a waitress about how she nearly died a couple of years before (one presumes because of her eating disorder) to which she replies with the standard “I didn’t ask to be born” line. This scene alone is one of Steadman’s finest moments as an actress and is indeed very moving.

There are many memorable lines and moments in this film and for myself I have seen this film many many times and I never grow tired of it; in fact I grow fonder of the principle characters: particularly Broadbent and Steadman. Of course it is also a museum piece now and its clothes, cars and decor is of an age from over 20 years ago now giving it added charm. The politics of the film are still highly present and relevant and the stance of Leigh is not the socialist shouter of a Ken Loach film but instead the social voice of the average person struggling with life with few films being as vocal about this or as convincing in the manner in which it does so as in that wonderful monologue from Steadman about her family being fighters and never giving up on the dream of a better life.

Bereft of any extras (even the standard trailer is missing) the picture also suffers from being a little grainy despite being in Blu-ray but this probably has more to do with the original film. It is great that it has been re-released again and hopefully will be seen by a new audience.