Film Review: Happy Go Lucky

by Mike Chapple, Liverpool Daily Post

Happy Go Lucky (15, 118mins)
Stars: Sally Hawkins, Alexis Zegerman, Andrea Riseborough, Samuel Roukin, Sinead Matthews, Kate O'Flynn, Sarah Niles
Directed by Mike Leigh

ANOTHER slice of life from Mike Leigh, determinedly more up-beat than other recent wedges such as Vera Drake.

It centres on primary school teacher Poppy (a chirpy Sally Hawkins), whose good nature lends itself to the eponymous title.

In fact, she’s so flibbertigibbety happy-clappy she begins the film as an irritant – but by the end, thanks to Leigh’s craft with development, we’ve warmed to her almost knowing benevolence.

We chart her course as she learns to drive, dance and romance through miserable old London town with the view that existence is a journey in which you have to make the most of what you’ve got.

On the way, she encounters more tragi-comic characters to add to the gems previously created for the Leigh treasure trove. Among them, we have a blazing comet of a performance from Karena Fernandez as a likeable, passionately volatile, flamenco tutor and a dark, disturbing one from Eddie Marsan as Poppy’s driving instructor. His ultimate explosion of mangled frustrations match those of disturbed men in other Leigh works such as Nuts In May, and Abigail’s Party.

As a work in general, Happy Go Lucky is up there with them in the firmament – and shining a great deal brighter in terms of outlook.