Mike Leigh’s latest film, 'Happy Go Lucky', has been received with enthusiasm as review pages proclaim: Mike Leigh does happy! Karen Ball wondered if she was the only film viewer who found the film’s heroine annoying. But then she decided, that may have been the whole point...
Mike Leigh paints an energetic picture of London, as seen through the eyes of Poppy – a 30-something primary school teacher, with an eccentric fashion sense and a compulsive need to joke. All the time. At everything.
The greatest challenge to her levels of happiness arrives in the form of a driving instructor who is deeply unhappy, verging on manic. He develops an unhealthy obsession with Poppy that culminates in violence and anger. But before we reach the violence and anger, we are treated to some achingly good comedy as the instructor attempts to impose the rules of the road on his most unruly student ever. Poppy stands for everything the driving instructor hates, and he ends up falling obsessively in love with her free spirit.
When she’s not taking lessons – be it driving classes, dancing or trampolining – Poppy is a devoted teacher. It’s clear what makes Poppy good at her job. She wears vibrant colours and jangly jewellery, she calls the children her ‘mates’ and when she finds a pupil bullying, she wants to find out what’s making him so angry. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that Poppy is the extra child in the class.
At moments during the film, one wonders what will happen when Poppy is forced to abandon the jokes and admit that she’s not always happy. If there are low-key moments, they only appear when she takes herself off for walks around London, usually after dealing with troubled souls. But happiness is always quickly restored again, and the jokes return – even after a scene with a homeless man that must have left every woman in the cinema wincing at Poppy’s recklessness.
For a lot of the film, I couldn’t help wondering – when is someone going to tell Poppy to stop being so annoying? To stop cracking jokes? Her flatmate in the film deserves a medal for patience. But then it hit me: the heroine of 'Happy Go Lucky' is meant to bug the life out of us. Mike Leigh didn’t want to give us a heroine we liked. He produced a heroine to annoy us. And then he made us like her, despite ourselves.
So when Mike Leigh does happy, he does it with a twist. He allows us to understand that happiness can come from the most unexpected places and people – even from a joker like Poppy.