Happy-Go-Lucky
Is optimism worth it? Mike Leigh's "Happy-Go-Lucky" wonders, and so might a moviegoer stumbling into a theater during dreadful economic and political times. The new film from the mischievous British filmmaker and social theorist puts one of life's natural sunflowers center screen and dares you not to be driven crazy by her relentless good cheer. Thank God for the Poppys of the world, you may think, so long as they keep away from me.
Loving Poppy, in fact, is the challenge of the film and of Sally Hawkins's daft, mercurial performance. A London schoolteacher still young enough to "go down the pub" every night with her best mate Zoe (Alexis Zegerman), the character is one of Leigh's salt-of-the-earth types, only with the metabolism of a small furry animal. Everything delights Poppy, even when it shouldn't. Her bicycle getting stolen is occasion merely to shrug, giggle, and wish she'd said a proper goodbye.
She signs up for a flamenco class and doubles over with amusement at the teacher's (Karina Fernandez) sense of bloody melodrama. Yet Poppy is serious about acquiring grace, even if she'll always be too impulsive for it. (It's hard to be a brooding swan when you see the comedy in everything.) As "Happy-Go-Lucky" goes on, it becomes apparent that Poppy already has a specific grace - that of kindness.
Leigh shows this in her dealings with her classroom's bully (Jack Macgeachin) - she peels back the layers of the boy's anger with a gentleness that's truly touching - and, more didactically, with a deranged street person (Stanley Townsend) and her older sister (Caroline Martin). The latter is one of those self-deluding bourgeoise strivers Leigh loves to skewer; in this context the sister's less a character than a fish in a barrel labeled "England's Class Issues."
"Happy-Go-Lucky" isn't one of Leigh's epic social canvases like "Secrets & Lies" or even "Topsy-Turvy"; rather, it's an edgy character study whose message only gradually emerges. Hawkins has built Poppy from the ground up in improvised rehearsals - the director's standard working method - and she brings a gooney-bird energy to the role that's a miracle to behold even as it can be insanely irritating. The woman simply never stops.
And if we occasionally want to strangle Poppy, imagine what's going through the head of Scott (Eddie Marsan), her driving instructor and a cynic of cosmic proportions. The scenes in his cramped automobile, Poppy and Scott lurching through the streets around Hampstead Heath in North London, form the comic heart of "Happy-Go-Lucky." He's a control freak teetering on the edge of total paranoia. She's the chaos principle in a miniskirt. This can't end well and it doesn't.
Marsan is currently in much demand as a character actor - he was the villain in "Hancock" and Edward Norton's manager in "The Illusionist" - and in Scott he creates a very specific British type: the self-taught yobbo - intelligent, eccentric, and angry. Poppy blithely pushes his buttons and strips his clutch, but the inevitable meltdown doesn't quite pay off dramatically. The limitations of Leigh's improv techniques reveal themselves here: Scott is fascinating as a sketch character but the odder he gets the less interesting he becomes. His bleakness is sad but ultimately easy to dismiss as a challenge to Poppy's eternal rosiness.
Also a little too easy, if thoroughly charming, are the scenes with an easygoing and grounded young bloke (Samuel Roukin) who might be just the man to absorb the heroine's whacked out vibes. It's Zegerman, as Poppy's roommate and best chum, who provides the counterweight the movie's seeking. Zoe stands for all those young working women who are good-natured but defeated by their mid-20s. You can already see the old lady she'll become in her eyes, and you can see what Poppy means to her.
It's for the Zoes of the world, in fact, that Poppy may be most necessary. More than a mate, she's a lifeline: proof, at her maddening best, that some human spirits are incapable of rolling over and crying uncle. Poppy is, quite simply, hope. Is optimism worth it? If not, what is?
Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com. For more on movies, go to boston.com/movienation.
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