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Another Year, another Palme d'Or?
2010-06-03 01:24
Veteran British film director Mike Leigh is among the hot favourites to win another Palme d'Or for his latest movie, 'Another Country', a bittersweet take on ordinary people's lives which, according to its maker, doesn't so much arise from an idea as move towards one in a 'journey of discovery'.
The 67-year-old director and playwright is well known for his realistic portrayal of working- and middle-class lives in films such as 'Secrets and Lies' and 'Vera Drake'. Famously, Leigh chooses to sow the seed and leave it up to his actors to find their own voices and characters as part of the process of filming.
Like Woody Allen's 'You Will Meet a Tall, Dark Stranger'', Leigh's film is a poem about coping with age - and we feel this particularly in 'Another Year', whose title suggests both progression through time and the loneliness and despair of living.
Ruth Sheen and Jim Broadbent play a couple who, in their late middle age, enjoy a pretty much perfect marriage. The film charts a year of their relationship, juxtaposing its comparative security with the neuroses and concerns of friends and acquaintances who cross their paths. Chief among these is Mary (Lesley Manville) , a fiftysomething alcoholic whose lucklessness in love provides an impressive counterpoint to the story of the happy couple, ironically named Tom and Gerri. The almost documentary-like series of observations teeters on the brink of both comedy and tragedy: a moving and true picture of life that has become Mike Leigh's hallmark.
What the judges make of the movie will soon be decided, but Leigh's film has already been extremely well reviewed by the vast majority of pundits and press out here in Cannes. Leigh says he would like to see his actors rewarded, but the hunch is that the film itself and its unassuming director may be the ones to be decorated afresh with the 2010 palms of victory.
Sasha McKenzie