Life Is Sweet (film)
Encyclopedia
Life Is Sweet is a 1991 British film directed by Mike Leigh
, starring Jim Broadbent
, Alison Steadman
, Claire Skinner
, Jane Horrocks
and Timothy Spall
. Leigh's third cinematic film, it was his most commercially successful title at the time of its release. The, by turns, tragi-comic story follows the fortunes of a working-class North London
family over a few weeks one summer.
from a disreputable acquaintance named Patsy (Stephen Rea
). He plans to clean, restore and put it into service on a local fast-food round. Wendy (his hard-working, good-natured and innuendo-prone wife) is sensibly sceptical about the project but understands her husband's ambitions. Their twin 22-year-old daughters (Natalie and Nicola) have profoundly different attitudes: tomboyish Natalie (who works as a plumber's mate) thinks it is a good idea if it will make her father happy, whereas the bitter, shut-in Nicola contemptuously and typically dismisses Andy as a "Capitalist!" Late at night, an anguished Nicola binges on chocolate and snacks, then forces herself to vomit. Natalie - awake in the next room - overhears her.
Aubrey, a hyperactive but emotionally labile family friend, is opening a Parisian-themed restaurant named The Regret Rien
. Wendy accepts a part-time job as waitress in the restaurant, but her and Andy's initial confidence in the scheme is undermined by Aubrey's unorthodox approach to the interior décor (a cluttered, half-realised combination of outmoded French clichés, such as a bicycle in the bay window, and of tasteless Victoriana such as a stuffed cat's head framed by broken accordion sconces) and by his menu. His singularly grotesque interpretation of the excesses of nouvelle cuisine
includes dishes such as saveloy
on a bed of lychee
s, liver
in lager
and pork
cyst.
During the afternoon, whilst the rest of the family are out at work, Nicola's lover (unnamed, played by David Thewlis
) comes to the family home to have sex with her. It appears that Nicola can only be aroused by a combination of light bondage and the consumption of chocolate spread
from her chest - a practice to which he only reluctantly agrees. He ultimately loses patience with her, accusing her of being "a bit vacant" and incapable of having a sincere, adult conversation or allowing herself to enjoy his companionship. She calls his bluff and loses: frustrated but resolute, he leaves her and her fragile emotional state deteriorates even further.
The opening night of The Regret Rien is a disaster. Wendy volunteers her help when it becomes clear that Aubrey's waitress has let him down - she has gone to liberated Prague
with her boyfriend. And Aubrey forgot to advertise the opening of the restaurant, with the result that no customers turn up. Aubrey gets hopelessly drunk, takes to the pavement and rails against the world, tells Wendy that he fancies her, starts taking his clothes off and passes out, 'a quivering, sobbing gelatinous blob of disappointment.' Wendy is forced to deal not only with him but with his glum, passive and infatuated sous-chef, Paula (Moya Brady
).
Meanwhile, Andy and Patsy have gone to their local pub, where Andy gets uncharacteristically but emphatically drunk and ends up sleeping inside the decrepit fast-food van in his driveway. Wendy returns home from the disastrous opening night of Aubrey's restaurant to find him there: unnerved by her bizarre evening, for the first time she loses her temper with the whole family.
Phlegmatic and dry-humoured Natalie enjoys her unconventional work as a plumber, the simple pleasures of a pint and a game of pool, and dreams of visiting the USA. In contrast, the fidgety and isolated Nicola becomes increasingly agitated, aggressive and reclusive, and Wendy finally confronts her. During the course of their long and anguished confrontation, Wendy makes it clear to Nicola that she is deeply worried about her, for example, wondering why she makes no attempt to get involved with the causes she claims to believe in. She tells Nicola of the struggle she and Andy endured to care for their baby daughters - how it meant she never went to college and Andy working in a "job he hates." It emerges that during an earlier phase of Nicola's bulimia, she almost starved to death. Ashamed and angry, Nicola is convinced that Wendy and the rest of the family hate her. Instead, as the exasperated Wendy tells her, "We don't hate you! We bloody love you, you stupid girl!" and leaves the room, deeply upset. The brittle behavioural armour with which Nicola has used to protect her psyche is now shattered and she breaks down sobbing.
Meanwhile, Andy is seen running his kitchen at work with energy and authority but slips on a spoon, breaking his ankle. Wendy receives the news with a characteristic mixture of sympathy and amusement. She drives him home from the hospital; aided by Natalie she makes him comfortable, and then goes to see Nicola, still in her room. Mother and daughter reconcile.
The film ends with Natalie and Nicola sitting peacefully in the evening sunshine in the back garden. Natalie observes that Nicola must own up to her parents about her bulimia. She then asks Nicola "D'you want some money?" and Nicola accepts gratefully, the first time in the film where she has accepted an offer of help.
. This was the first release by Thin Man, who have produced all Leigh's films since Life Is Sweet.
The script was developed by Leigh and the cast, employing his established practice of collectively improvising
and rehearsing for several weeks prior to actual shooting. For example, Aubrey's bizarre recipe
s were devised by Leigh and Timothy Spall over the course of an evening, and then checked for plausibility with a professional chef, who advised them about which ones were technically impossible to prepare; all the ones that appear in the film are, as Leigh put it, "all feasible, gross as it sounds."
David Thewlis, who played Nicola's anonymous lover, was disappointed at being given such a small role. Leigh promised him that the next time he considered Thewlis for a role in a film, "he'd be given a fair slice of the pie." Thewlis' next role in a Leigh film was his award-winning performance as the lead character Johnny in Naked
.
The film was shot entirely on location in Enfield
, Middlesex
, U.K.
Alison Chitty
found the house in Enfield for Life is Sweet and fell in love with it because of its garden shed. She also found the old mobile snack-bar, which Rea's Patsy sells on to Broadbent's Andy as a pig in a poke
, in Northampton
, and painted it up.
Life is Sweet 's visual world is bright, jaunty, primary-coloured - Leigh's next film Naked
was conceived in blacks and blues and a 'dark, dilapidated grunginess', the contrast with this, its predecessor, very marked.
film reviewer awarded the film seven stars out of a possible ten. Roger Ebert
in the Chicago Sun-Times
was full of praise, commenting that in spite of the constraints of independent film production, the film was "as funny, spontaneous and free as if it had been made on a lark by a millionaire" He added that "By the end of Life is Sweet we are treading close to the stuff of life itself - to the way we all struggle and make do, compromise some of our dreams and insist on the others. Watching this movie made me realize how boring and thin many movies are; how they substitute plots for the fascinations of life."
Hal Hinson of the Washington Post called the film "sublime" and "gently brilliant".
Desson Thompson of the same paper agreed, praising Leigh for discovering "the tragic beauty of the mundane".
David Sexton in the Times Literary Supplement was critical however, and said that "the film never transcends sit-com and remains static and anecdotal, its unit the scene, not the complete story." Further, he wrote that the film is, " the product of an unresolved attitude to its subject matter and in particular of an uneasy relation to questions of class." Philip French
, in The Observer
countered this idea: "Leigh has been called patronising. The charge is false. The Noël Coward
/David Lean
film This Happy Breed
, evoked by Leigh in several panning shots across suburban back gardens, is patronising. Coward and Lean pat their characters on the back...Leigh shakes them, hugs them, sometimes despairs over them, but never thinks that they are other than versions of ourselves."
" by Charles Dumont
and Michel Vaucaire
, made famous by French singer Edith Piaf
.
Andy often speaks in comic voices, at one point uttering the out-of-context line "He's fallen in the water!". This was the catchphrase of Little Jim, a recurring character from the 1950s BBC
radio comedy
programme The Goon Show
.
Patsy is a supporter of Tottenham Hotspur football club. According to Leigh this was a source of some discomfort to Stephen Rea who played the character, since Rea is a supporter of the team's long-term rivals
Arsenal
.
Mike Leigh
Michael "Mike" Leigh, OBE is a British writer and director of film and theatre. He studied theatre at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and studied further at the Camberwell School of Art and the Central School of Art and Design. He began as a theatre director and playwright in the mid 1960s...
, starring Jim Broadbent
Jim Broadbent
James "Jim" Broadbent is an English theatre, film, and television actor. He is known for his roles in Iris, Moulin Rouge!, Topsy-Turvy, Hot Fuzz, and Bridget Jones' Diary...
, Alison Steadman
Alison Steadman
Alison Steadman OBE is an English actress. She established her career with roles such as Beverley in Abigail's Party and Candice Marie in Nuts in May for the director Mike Leigh, to whom she was once married. In addition to her stage and radio work, she has had lead roles in The Singing Detective,...
, Claire Skinner
Claire Skinner
Claire L. Skinner is an English actress, who is well known in the United Kingdom for her television career.-Biography:Born and brought up in Hemel Hempstead, Skinner, the youngest daughter of a shopkeeper and an Irish-born secretary, was immensely shy as a child...
, Jane Horrocks
Jane Horrocks
Barbara Jane Horrocks is an English voice, stage, screen and television actress, voice artist, musician, and singer. She is best known for her role as "Bubble" in the TV series Absolutely Fabulous as well as her distinctive voice....
and Timothy Spall
Timothy Spall
Timothy Leonard Spall, OBE is an English character actor and occasional presenter.-Early life:Spall, the third of four sons, was born in Battersea, London. His mother, Sylvia R. , was a hairdresser, and his father, Joseph L. Spall, was a postal worker...
. Leigh's third cinematic film, it was his most commercially successful title at the time of its release. The, by turns, tragi-comic story follows the fortunes of a working-class North London
North London
North London is the northern part of London, England. It is an imprecise description and the area it covers is defined differently for a range of purposes. Common to these definitions is that it includes districts located north of the River Thames and is used in comparison with South...
family over a few weeks one summer.
Plot
Andy, a senior chef in a large London catering facility, buys a dilapidated fast-food vanFood truck
A food truck, mobile kitchen, mobile canteen, or catering truck is a mobile venue that sells food. Some, including ice cream trucks, sell mostly frozen or prepackaged food; others are more like restaurants-on-wheels...
from a disreputable acquaintance named Patsy (Stephen Rea
Stephen Rea
Stephen Rea is an Irish film and stage actor. Rea has appeared in high profile films such as V for Vendetta, Michael Collins, Interview with the Vampire and Breakfast on Pluto...
). He plans to clean, restore and put it into service on a local fast-food round. Wendy (his hard-working, good-natured and innuendo-prone wife) is sensibly sceptical about the project but understands her husband's ambitions. Their twin 22-year-old daughters (Natalie and Nicola) have profoundly different attitudes: tomboyish Natalie (who works as a plumber's mate) thinks it is a good idea if it will make her father happy, whereas the bitter, shut-in Nicola contemptuously and typically dismisses Andy as a "Capitalist!" Late at night, an anguished Nicola binges on chocolate and snacks, then forces herself to vomit. Natalie - awake in the next room - overhears her.
Aubrey, a hyperactive but emotionally labile family friend, is opening a Parisian-themed restaurant named The Regret Rien
Non, je ne regrette rien
"Non, je ne regrette rien" , meaning "No, I'm not sorry for anything", is a French song composed by Charles Dumont, with lyrics by Michel Vaucaire. It was written in 1956, and is best known through its 1960 recording by Édith Piaf....
. Wendy accepts a part-time job as waitress in the restaurant, but her and Andy's initial confidence in the scheme is undermined by Aubrey's unorthodox approach to the interior décor (a cluttered, half-realised combination of outmoded French clichés, such as a bicycle in the bay window, and of tasteless Victoriana such as a stuffed cat's head framed by broken accordion sconces) and by his menu. His singularly grotesque interpretation of the excesses of nouvelle cuisine
Nouvelle Cuisine
Nouvelle cuisine is an approach to cooking and food presentation used in French cuisine. By contrast with cuisine classique, an older form of French haute cuisine, nouvelle cuisine is characterized by lighter, more delicate dishes and an increased emphasis on presentation.-History:The term...
includes dishes such as saveloy
Saveloy
A saveloy is a type of highly seasoned sausage, usually bright red in colour, which is typically available in English fish and chips shops,but more often from pork shops sometimes fried in batter...
on a bed of lychee
Lychee
The lychee is the sole member of the genus Litchi in the soapberry family, Sapindaceae. It is a tropical and subtropical fruit tree native to Southern China and Southeast Asia, and now cultivated in many parts of the world...
s, liver
Liver
The liver is a vital organ present in vertebrates and some other animals. It has a wide range of functions, including detoxification, protein synthesis, and production of biochemicals necessary for digestion...
in lager
Lager
Lager is a type of beer made from malted barley that is brewed and stored at low temperatures. There are many types of lager; pale lager is the most widely-consumed and commercially available style of beer in the world; Pilsner, Bock, Dortmunder Export and Märzen are all styles of lager...
and pork
Pork
Pork is the culinary name for meat from the domestic pig , which is eaten in many countries. It is one of the most commonly consumed meats worldwide, with evidence of pig husbandry dating back to 5000 BC....
cyst.
During the afternoon, whilst the rest of the family are out at work, Nicola's lover (unnamed, played by David Thewlis
David Thewlis
David Thewlis is an English actor of stage and screen. His most commercially successful role to date has been that of Remus Lupin, in the Harry Potter film series...
) comes to the family home to have sex with her. It appears that Nicola can only be aroused by a combination of light bondage and the consumption of chocolate spread
Nutella
Nutella is the brand name of a chocolate spread. Nutella, manufactured by the Italian company Ferrero, was introduced on the market in 1963. The recipe was developed from an earlier Ferrero spread released in 1944. Nutella is now sold in over 75 countries....
from her chest - a practice to which he only reluctantly agrees. He ultimately loses patience with her, accusing her of being "a bit vacant" and incapable of having a sincere, adult conversation or allowing herself to enjoy his companionship. She calls his bluff and loses: frustrated but resolute, he leaves her and her fragile emotional state deteriorates even further.
The opening night of The Regret Rien is a disaster. Wendy volunteers her help when it becomes clear that Aubrey's waitress has let him down - she has gone to liberated Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
with her boyfriend. And Aubrey forgot to advertise the opening of the restaurant, with the result that no customers turn up. Aubrey gets hopelessly drunk, takes to the pavement and rails against the world, tells Wendy that he fancies her, starts taking his clothes off and passes out, 'a quivering, sobbing gelatinous blob of disappointment.' Wendy is forced to deal not only with him but with his glum, passive and infatuated sous-chef, Paula (Moya Brady
Moya Brady
Moya Brady is a British actress. Born in Manchester, Brady grew up in the seaside town of Blackpool with other actor classmates such as David Thewlis of Harry Potter fame. She has appeared in a wide variety of roles in film, television and the theatre, including a role as F.D.O. Roberta Cryer in...
).
Meanwhile, Andy and Patsy have gone to their local pub, where Andy gets uncharacteristically but emphatically drunk and ends up sleeping inside the decrepit fast-food van in his driveway. Wendy returns home from the disastrous opening night of Aubrey's restaurant to find him there: unnerved by her bizarre evening, for the first time she loses her temper with the whole family.
Phlegmatic and dry-humoured Natalie enjoys her unconventional work as a plumber, the simple pleasures of a pint and a game of pool, and dreams of visiting the USA. In contrast, the fidgety and isolated Nicola becomes increasingly agitated, aggressive and reclusive, and Wendy finally confronts her. During the course of their long and anguished confrontation, Wendy makes it clear to Nicola that she is deeply worried about her, for example, wondering why she makes no attempt to get involved with the causes she claims to believe in. She tells Nicola of the struggle she and Andy endured to care for their baby daughters - how it meant she never went to college and Andy working in a "job he hates." It emerges that during an earlier phase of Nicola's bulimia, she almost starved to death. Ashamed and angry, Nicola is convinced that Wendy and the rest of the family hate her. Instead, as the exasperated Wendy tells her, "We don't hate you! We bloody love you, you stupid girl!" and leaves the room, deeply upset. The brittle behavioural armour with which Nicola has used to protect her psyche is now shattered and she breaks down sobbing.
Meanwhile, Andy is seen running his kitchen at work with energy and authority but slips on a spoon, breaking his ankle. Wendy receives the news with a characteristic mixture of sympathy and amusement. She drives him home from the hospital; aided by Natalie she makes him comfortable, and then goes to see Nicola, still in her room. Mother and daughter reconcile.
The film ends with Natalie and Nicola sitting peacefully in the evening sunshine in the back garden. Natalie observes that Nicola must own up to her parents about her bulimia. She then asks Nicola "D'you want some money?" and Nicola accepts gratefully, the first time in the film where she has accepted an offer of help.
Cast
- Alison SteadmanAlison SteadmanAlison Steadman OBE is an English actress. She established her career with roles such as Beverley in Abigail's Party and Candice Marie in Nuts in May for the director Mike Leigh, to whom she was once married. In addition to her stage and radio work, she has had lead roles in The Singing Detective,...
as Wendy. She works in a baby clothing shop and teaches a dance class to young children. She is the emotional core of the family and talks continually, keeping up an amused running commentary on everything around her, but concerned about the welfare of her family, especially her troubled daughter Nicola. She loves her husband, but recognises that he lacks entrepreneurial spirit; she describes him as having "two speeds, slow and stop". - Jim BroadbentJim BroadbentJames "Jim" Broadbent is an English theatre, film, and television actor. He is known for his roles in Iris, Moulin Rouge!, Topsy-Turvy, Hot Fuzz, and Bridget Jones' Diary...
as Andy, Wendy's husband and a professional head cook in an industrial kitchen. Andy is presented as a loving but slightly ineffectual husband and father, fond of tinkering in his shed and buying broken things which he plans to get around to fixing at some unspecified future date. By contrast, the scenes depicting Andy at work show him as a highly competent executive chef. - Claire SkinnerClaire SkinnerClaire L. Skinner is an English actress, who is well known in the United Kingdom for her television career.-Biography:Born and brought up in Hemel Hempstead, Skinner, the youngest daughter of a shopkeeper and an Irish-born secretary, was immensely shy as a child...
as Andy and Wendy's daughter Natalie, a plumberPlumberA plumber is a tradesperson who specializes in installing and maintaining systems used for potable water, sewage, and drainage in plumbing systems. The term dates from ancient times, and is related to the Latin word for lead, "plumbum." A person engaged in fixing metaphorical "leaks" may also be...
who spends her leisure time playing pool and drinking with her male workmates. She never shows any interest in dating or romance, but reads travel brochures about the USA in her room at night. Natalie is described by her mother as "happy", but she is the only principal character in the film who never smiles. - Jane HorrocksJane HorrocksBarbara Jane Horrocks is an English voice, stage, screen and television actress, voice artist, musician, and singer. She is best known for her role as "Bubble" in the TV series Absolutely Fabulous as well as her distinctive voice....
as Nicola, Natalie's twin sister. Nicola is unemployed, extremely thin, smokes continually, eats her meals separately from the others and criticises the behaviour of everyone around her, largely on the grounds of a superficial kind of political correctnessPolitical correctnessPolitical correctness is a term which denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, certain other religions, beliefs or ideologies, disability, and age-related contexts,...
. Her favourite expression is "BollocksBollocks"Bollocks" is a word of Anglo-Saxon origin, meaning "testicles". The word is often used figuratively in British English and Hiberno-English, as a noun to mean "nonsense", an expletive following a minor accident or misfortune, or an adjective to mean "poor quality" or "useless"...
!" It is revealed early on that Nicola is bulimic; she keeps a locked suitcase full of snacks and sweets under her bed, and late at night she bingeBinge eatingBinge eating is a pattern of disordered eating which consists of episodes of uncontrollable eating. It is sometimes as a symptom of binge eating disorder. During such binges, a person rapidly consumes an excessive amount of food...
s on them and then makes herself vomit. - Timothy SpallTimothy SpallTimothy Leonard Spall, OBE is an English character actor and occasional presenter.-Early life:Spall, the third of four sons, was born in Battersea, London. His mother, Sylvia R. , was a hairdresser, and his father, Joseph L. Spall, was a postal worker...
as Aubrey, an old friend of the family. Aubrey is nervous, fidgety and has poor impulse control, often randomly destroying nearby objects; the other way he vents his tensions is by playing the drums very badly. He considers himself a culinary "genius", but his cooking is eccentric to the point of inedible, and he lacks many basic social skills; early in the film he visits Wendy on the pretext of giving her a pineapplePineapplePineapple is the common name for a tropical plant and its edible fruit, which is actually a multiple fruit consisting of coalesced berries. It was given the name pineapple due to its resemblance to a pine cone. The pineapple is by far the most economically important plant in the Bromeliaceae...
which he suspects to be "on the turnDecompositionDecomposition is the process by which organic material is broken down into simpler forms of matter. The process is essential for recycling the finite matter that occupies physical space in the biome. Bodies of living organisms begin to decompose shortly after death...
", all the while pummelling it between his hands as if it were an American footballAmerican footballAmerican football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...
. " Aubrey is like a disc jockey, with a phoney transatlantic air about him and a misconception of his own image that has spiralled into grotesque parody. He comes from St AlbansSt AlbansSt Albans is a city in southern Hertfordshire, England, around north of central London, which forms the main urban area of the City and District of St Albans. It is a historic market town, and is now a sought-after dormitory town within the London commuter belt...
but he sounds like Kid Jensen." He appears to harbour unrequited lusts for both Wendy and Nicola.
Production
The film was a co-production between British Screen Productions, Channel Four Films and Thin Man Films, a production company created by Mike Leigh and producer Simon Channing-WilliamsSimon Channing-Williams
Simon Channing-Williams was a British film producer. He was born in Maidenhead, Berkshire. He formed Thin Man Productions with Mike Leigh...
. This was the first release by Thin Man, who have produced all Leigh's films since Life Is Sweet.
The script was developed by Leigh and the cast, employing his established practice of collectively improvising
Improvisation
Improvisation is the practice of acting, singing, talking and reacting, of making and creating, in the moment and in response to the stimulus of one's immediate environment and inner feelings. This can result in the invention of new thought patterns, new practices, new structures or symbols, and/or...
and rehearsing for several weeks prior to actual shooting. For example, Aubrey's bizarre recipe
Recipe
A recipe is a set of instructions that describe how to prepare or make something, especially a culinary dish.-Components:Modern culinary recipes normally consist of several components*The name of the dish...
s were devised by Leigh and Timothy Spall over the course of an evening, and then checked for plausibility with a professional chef, who advised them about which ones were technically impossible to prepare; all the ones that appear in the film are, as Leigh put it, "all feasible, gross as it sounds."
David Thewlis, who played Nicola's anonymous lover, was disappointed at being given such a small role. Leigh promised him that the next time he considered Thewlis for a role in a film, "he'd be given a fair slice of the pie." Thewlis' next role in a Leigh film was his award-winning performance as the lead character Johnny in Naked
Naked (film)
Naked is a 1993 British film directed by Mike Leigh. Before this film, Leigh was known for subtler comedic dissections of middle-class and working-class manners. Naked was more stark and brutal than his previous works...
.
The film was shot entirely on location in Enfield
London Borough of Enfield
The London Borough of Enfield is the most northerly London borough and forms part of Outer London. It borders the London Boroughs of Barnet, Haringey and Waltham Forest...
, Middlesex
Middlesex
Middlesex is one of the historic counties of England and the second smallest by area. The low-lying county contained the wealthy and politically independent City of London on its southern boundary and was dominated by it from a very early time...
, U.K.
Alison Chitty
Alison Chitty
Alison Chitty OBE is an Olivier Award winning production designer and set and costume designer, known for her collaborations with Mike Leigh, Francesca Zambello and Sir Peter Hall. She is also the Director of the Motley Theatre Design Course, a successor to Motley Theatre Design Group...
found the house in Enfield for Life is Sweet and fell in love with it because of its garden shed. She also found the old mobile snack-bar, which Rea's Patsy sells on to Broadbent's Andy as a pig in a poke
Pig in a poke
The idioms pig in a poke and sell a pup refer to a confidence trick originating in the Late Middle Ages, when meat was scarce, but cats and dogs were not...
, in Northampton
Northampton
Northampton is a large market town and local government district in the East Midlands region of England. Situated about north-west of London and around south-east of Birmingham, Northampton lies on the River Nene and is the county town of Northamptonshire. The demonym of Northampton is...
, and painted it up.
Life is Sweet 's visual world is bright, jaunty, primary-coloured - Leigh's next film Naked
Naked (film)
Naked is a 1993 British film directed by Mike Leigh. Before this film, Leigh was known for subtler comedic dissections of middle-class and working-class manners. Naked was more stark and brutal than his previous works...
was conceived in blacks and blues and a 'dark, dilapidated grunginess', the contrast with this, its predecessor, very marked.
Critical reception
The film received mostly favourable reviews. The GuardianThe Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
film reviewer awarded the film seven stars out of a possible ten. Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
in the Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...
was full of praise, commenting that in spite of the constraints of independent film production, the film was "as funny, spontaneous and free as if it had been made on a lark by a millionaire" He added that "By the end of Life is Sweet we are treading close to the stuff of life itself - to the way we all struggle and make do, compromise some of our dreams and insist on the others. Watching this movie made me realize how boring and thin many movies are; how they substitute plots for the fascinations of life."
Hal Hinson of the Washington Post called the film "sublime" and "gently brilliant".
Desson Thompson of the same paper agreed, praising Leigh for discovering "the tragic beauty of the mundane".
David Sexton in the Times Literary Supplement was critical however, and said that "the film never transcends sit-com and remains static and anecdotal, its unit the scene, not the complete story." Further, he wrote that the film is, " the product of an unresolved attitude to its subject matter and in particular of an uneasy relation to questions of class." Philip French
Philip French
Philip French is a British film critic and former radio producer.French, the son of an insurance salesman, was educated at the direct grant Bristol Grammar School, read Law at Oxford University. and post graduate study in Journalism at Indiana University, Bloomington on a scholarship.He has been...
, in The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
countered this idea: "Leigh has been called patronising. The charge is false. The Noël Coward
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...
/David Lean
David Lean
Sir David Lean CBE was an English film director, producer, screenwriter, and editor best remembered for big-screen epics such as The Bridge on the River Kwai , Lawrence of Arabia ,...
film This Happy Breed
This Happy Breed (film)
This Happy Breed is a 1944 British drama film directed by David Lean. The screenplay by Lean, Anthony Havelock-Allan and Ronald Neame is based on the 1939 play of the same title by Noël Coward...
, evoked by Leigh in several panning shots across suburban back gardens, is patronising. Coward and Lean pat their characters on the back...Leigh shakes them, hugs them, sometimes despairs over them, but never thinks that they are other than versions of ourselves."
Cultural references
Aubrey's restaurant The Regret Rien is named after the 1956 song "Non, je ne regrette rienNon, je ne regrette rien
"Non, je ne regrette rien" , meaning "No, I'm not sorry for anything", is a French song composed by Charles Dumont, with lyrics by Michel Vaucaire. It was written in 1956, and is best known through its 1960 recording by Édith Piaf....
" by Charles Dumont
Charles Dumont
Charles Dumont, born in 1929 in Cahors , is a French singer and composer.He wrote songs until the 1960s, sometimes under an alias, for Dalida, Gloria Lasso, Luis Mariano and Tino Rossi. He worked with lyricist Michel Vaucaire. In 1956 they wrote Non, je ne regrette rien, recorded in 1960 by Édith...
and Michel Vaucaire
Michel Vaucaire
Michel Vaucaire was a French lyricist.He often collaborated with the composer Charles Dumont in whom he always had confidence to put his lyrics to music...
, made famous by French singer Edith Piaf
Édith Piaf
Édith Piaf , born Édith Giovanna Gassion, was a French singer and cultural icon who became widely regarded as France's greatest popular singer. Her singing reflected her life, with her specialty being ballads...
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Andy often speaks in comic voices, at one point uttering the out-of-context line "He's fallen in the water!". This was the catchphrase of Little Jim, a recurring character from the 1950s BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
radio comedy
Radio comedy
Radio comedy, or comedic radio programming, is a radio broadcast that may involve sitcom elements, sketches and various types of comedy found on other media. It may also include more surreal or fantastic elements, as these can be conveyed on a small budget with just a few sound effects or some...
programme The Goon Show
The Goon Show
The Goon Show was a British radio comedy programme, originally produced and broadcast by the BBC Home Service from 1951 to 1960, with occasional repeats on the BBC Light Programme...
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Patsy is a supporter of Tottenham Hotspur football club. According to Leigh this was a source of some discomfort to Stephen Rea who played the character, since Rea is a supporter of the team's long-term rivals
North London derby
The North London derby is the name of the football local derby between the two major teams in North London – Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur.-History:...
Arsenal
Arsenal F.C.
Arsenal Football Club is a professional English Premier League football club based in North London. One of the most successful clubs in English football, it has won 13 First Division and Premier League titles and 10 FA Cups...
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Awards and nominations
- Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards, USA, 1991: Best Supporting Actress - Jane Horrocks
- Independent Spirit AwardsIndependent Spirit AwardsThe Independent Spirit Awards , founded in 1984, are awards dedicated to independent filmmakers. Winners were typically presented with acrylic glass pyramids containing suspended shoestrings representing the paltry budgets of independent films. In 1986, the event was renamed the Independent Spirit...
, USA, 1992: Best Foreign Film (nominated) - Bodil Awards, Denmark, 1992: Best European Film
- London Critics Circle Film Awards, UK, 1992: British Film of the Year
- National Society of Film CriticsNational Society of Film CriticsThe National Society of Film Critics is an American film critic organization. As of December 2007 the NSFC had approximately 60 members who wrote for a variety of weekly and daily newspapers.-History:...
Awards, USA, 1992- Best Film
- Best Actress - Alison Steadman
- Best Supporting Actress - Jane Horrocks