Sally Hawkins's Golden Globe win for her role in Happy-Go-Lucky has cemented the British film's popularity in the United States. But why haven't we taken its feelgood message to heart?

Published on Monday 12 January 2009 19:11

LIFE-AFFIRMINGLY warm-hearted and kooky, or infuriatingly mouthy and ditzy, depending on your point of view, Sally Hawkins's performance as the central character, Poppy, in Mike Leigh's atypically breezy Happy-Go-Lucky was the eponymous essence of the film, and it clearly charmed the Hollywood judges, who handed Hawkins a best comedy actress award at Sunday's Golden Globes ceremony.

With Kate Winslet and Danny Boyle scooping awards by the armful, the awards turned out to be a tour de force for British film talent. Hawkins's Globe, however, was arguably the least expected during this glittering precursor of next month's Oscars, because it was such a very British film, by a heavyweight but far from ritzy British director.

Yet, for a film-maker so associated with often bleak social realism – Vera Drake, about backstreet abortions; Secrets and Lies, which tackles race issues and family secrets; or the early Bleak Moments (the title says it all) – Mike Leigh came out with a film which radiated "positivism" in the face of a troubled society, through the irrepressible Poppy. Her affirmative buoyancy certainly provides an antidote to these troubled times – although it came out in May, when the credit crunch was still a distant, undefined rumble.

Not that all the film's characters radiate sunshine as unabatedly as Poppy. The laughter turns hollow as Leigh's sharp eye for a flawed society's problems gives us Scott, the deeply disturbed driving instructor, Eddie Marsan portraying him as a nastily simmering caldera of frustrations, loopy conspiracy theories and racist bigotry.

Sunday's Golden Globe was just the latest in a clutch of awards won by the film on the other side of the Atlantic: earlier this month the National Society of Film Critics in the US named Leigh as best director and screenwriter, Hawkins as best actress and Marsan as best supporting actor. Yet despite the critical acclaim which greeted it on release, Happy-Go-Lucky didn't seem to enjoy such an effusive reception in the UK, although it did win the best supporting actor and best supporting actress classes in the British Independent Film Awards.

Cynics might argue that American audiences may have found Sally Hawkins's character – a vision in uncoordinated colours and wobbly boots – engagingly ditzy, while some in the UK (this viewer included) may have simply found her endless effervescence insufferably OTT, and had some difficulty in reconciling this apparent bubblehead with the able and compassionate primary school teacher we saw in the classroom.

Others less churlish saw it differently. "Charmingly addictive" was how one critic described it, while The Scotsman's film critic, Alistair Harkness, hailed it as "Leigh's most joyous picture to date, although watching it after Naked does convince you that its title will eventually be revealed to be ironic. Relax, though: it's not."

According to Harkness: "Leigh's skill is to let us see not just how much more difficult it is to reach out to someone in the adult world, but to show us how important it is to keep trying, even when such efforts can be misinterpreted, unpredictable and unrewarding. That's the subtle humanist message woven throughout this film and it's another exemplary demonstration of Leigh's deep-rooted social concern."

So as the financial crisis bites, global warming looms and societies tear each other to pieces in the Middle East, is Happy-Go-Lucky a "feel-good" film for our times, and do we need more like them? Are staples such as The Full Monty or Brassed Off, and recent addition to the feel-good canon, Mamma Mia!, just what we need in troubled times, or do they simply take our eye off the ball?

Leigh himself has said that Happy-Go-Lucky "is about compassion and warmth… life is complex, life's tough, life's great, life's a nightmare… nothing is black and white".

But he also argues that it is not a film about happiness: "What I wanted to explore was the fact that we're in tough times, we are destroying the planet, we know, and we're destroying each other. But while all that is going on and we should be thinking about it, people are getting on with it, people are being positive. Poppy is a teacher, she's teaching the future, the next generation. People all round the world are doing that. So in a way it's not a film about happiness as such, but it is about positivism. It's an antimiserablist film."

Hannah McGill, the artistic director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival, reckons that we could see a rash of escapist films in a time of recession, but stresses that "a feel-good film doesn't necessarily mean a bad film or a lightweight film. Miserablism can just be an easy way to make what's seen as a serious film, whereas joy is also an interesting extreme experience worth exploring, and I think that's what Mike Leigh was trying to do. The film is about why some people have certain temperaments, and that's a very valid thing to explore."

On the other hand, she concedes, quite a few Americans may have been breathing a sigh of relief: "Finally, a Mike Leigh film that we can go to without feeling guilty!"

She adds: "I do think Americans tend to categorise British films as being depressing and downbeat, and the fact that both Happy-Go-Lucky and Slumdog Millionaire have both been very successful is significant. I think that, after a hard day's work, people are more likely to go and see a film called Happy-Go-Lucky than a film about an abortionist. It's human nature."

Happy-Go-Lucky opens with Poppy weaving through London on her bicycle, which is promptly stolen – "Oh, I never got to say goodbye," she remarks insouciantly – and ends with her and her flatmate circling aimlessly in a rowing boat on a boating pond, not quite sure where they're headed, but still giving out those positive messages.

On the far side of that bigger Pond, Americans do seem more appreciative of Poppy's outlook, while we in Britain tend to drift around in the doldrums of cynicism. Perhaps, as the Golden Globes suggest, we need to be thrown a line in more positive thinking.