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Happy-Go-Lucky Our rating: Your rating: 1 2 3 4 Your Comments: see all MPAA rating: R (for language) Genre: Drama Theater release: October 10, 2008 by Miramax Films Directed by: Mike Leigh Runtime: 1 hour 58 minutes Cast: Sally Hawkins (Poppy), Eddie Marsan (Scott), Alexis Zegerman (Zoe), Samuel Roukin (Tim), Karina Fernandez (Flamenco Teacher), Stanley Townsend (Tramp), Kate O'Flynn (Suzy), Caroline Martin (Helen) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

Happiness is an elusive quality in a Mike Leigh film. Sometimes, in his films, you will meet characters who try to cheer other people up, but there is usually a darker side to their perkiness. The photographer who tries to get people to smile in Secrets and Lies is stressed out by conflicts within his family; the woman who provides illegal abortions in Vera Drake naively tells her clients they will all be "right as rain" after she has left, and is caught off-guard when one of them almost dies thanks to her efforts; and when Gilbert & Sullivan premiere their latest musical comedy in Topsy-Turvy, a depressed Gilbert responds to the applause by privately grumbling to his neglected wife, "There's something inherently disappointing about success."

So when you hear that Leigh's newest film is about an irrepressibly upbeat woman who takes life's woes in stride, you can hardly be blamed for wondering what the catch is. Will she have a dark side? Will she have a dark secret? Will her zest for life lead to tragedy? Surely, at some point, some shoe, somewhere, will drop.

Sally Hawkins as Poppy, an effervescent teacher

But, well, no, that doesn't happen, not quite, though Leigh certainly puts his newest, cheeriest protagonist to the test—starting with one of the very first scenes, in which Poppy (Sally Hawkins), after riding happily through London, parks her bike outside a bookstore and then returns to find that it has been stolen. Does she let this incident get her down? Not in the least; she simply shrugs and sighs that she never got to say goodbye. Later, she says that she could never replace the bike, almost as though it had been a pet, and so she takes driving lessons instead—and her instructor, Scott (Eddie Marsan), is a bitter, agitated sort of bloke who doesn't respond well at all to the constant jokes that Poppy makes as he tries to focus her attention.

You have to sympathize with Scott on some level: Poppy, who is 30, can seem so flighty at times that you wonder how safe a driver she could ever really be. But their first driving lesson is hilarious, as Poppy giggles and teases, and Scott—seemingly the frustrated, no-nonsense voice of common sense—suddenly gives the rear-view mirror an exotic name and says it has something to do with fallen angels. Scott immediately defends his remark by saying it's just a memory aide, and he does have a point: I haven't forgotten his rear-view mirror either, since seeing this scene. But Poppy bounces back with an even funnier, and sillier, remark. And on it goes.

One of the first things we learn about Poppy is that she has friends, and they like to go to clubs and stay up all night laughing over the dumbest things. The morning after one such night, when her friends and her sister Suzy (Kate O'Flynn) have gone back to their homes, Poppy and her roommate Zoe (the delightfully deadpan Alexis Zegerman) start making animal masks out of paper bags. But it isn't until later that you discover why they are doing this: both Poppy and Zoe are elementary school teachers, and this is one of the activities they have planned for their students.

Poppy and Zoe (Alexis Zegerman) have a row

The fact that Poppy teaches children, and the way Leigh lets this information unfold, raise some interesting questions about the relationship between happiness and maturity. Has Poppy grown up? Is her happiness a form of denial, part of a refusal to grow up and face the world as it is? Or is it a sign that she has grown up better than most, and kept a spirit of childlike wonder and empathy that others have lost?

The film quickly disabuses us of any notion that childhood, itself, is a time of perfect bliss—or that teachers like Poppy never need to be serious in dealing with their students. At one point, Poppy looks out the window and sees a boy bullying another boy. Will she merely watch, or will she intervene? Leigh keeps us in suspense by cutting from the school to one of Poppy's driving lessons (where she speculates that Scott might be the way he is because he was bullied as a kid), and back again. But the gist of this scene, and others, is that there is more to Poppy than we might suspect at first. When she and her friends go to the pub and talk about the dangers their students face on the Internet, Poppy says certain things make her "angry," and for just a moment, you can sense a sort of turmoil behind her happy façade.

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