Like piss left behind by a dog, there are tell-tale signs which mark a Mike Leigh film as his own: the working-class setting, the funereal acoustic soundtrack, the kitchen-sink acting, the unfashionably inconspicuous direction (although this is more a case of the art which conceals the art). These can be found in abundance in Leigh's latest film All or Nothing, which portrays the dog's life enjoyed by the appropriately named Bassetts and their neighbours on a South London housing estate. Also present is Leigh's usual attention to background detail - the graffiti on the estate walls, the drab furnishings in the flats - conjuring an atmosphere that you can almost smell.
The film is episodic, interweaving multiple strands which are not really narratives so much as snapshots of different lives in a community. Towards the end, there is a single dramatic event which disrupts all these lives, bringing into sharp focus their qualities and faults - a device familiar from (less drab) films like Short Cuts and Magnolia.
As with all of Leigh's productions, this is very much an ensemble piece. Leigh is famous for developing his scripts out of many months' worth of improvisational work with his actors: this makes for a strange blend of dialogue, half naturalistic, half contrived; and, perhaps unsurpisingly, there seems to be a direct correlation between the quality of characterisation and the quality of acting. Timothy Spall, for example, is excellent, and his character, the contemplative, depressed minicab driver Phil Bassett, is complex and rounded. So is his quietly dignified daughter Rachel, played with extraordinary subtlety and restraint by Alison Garland. Equally excellent are Ruth Sheen as strong single mother Maureen, and Sally Hawkins as Sam, a teenage girl just discovering the dangerous power of her sexuality. Other, less sympathetic characters, however, like hopeless alcoholic Carol (Marion Bailey) and violent lad Jason (Daniel Mays), are little more than caricatures.
At times I found this film somewhat meandering, and felt that its script might have been tighter. Yet for the most part Leigh succeeds in teasing out suggestive parallels in his different characters' lives - never more effectively than when he explores the twinned themes of love and loneliness which hold the entire film together. Here Leigh has not quite reached the heights he achieved in Naked or Secrets and Lies, but nonetheless All or Nothing is a diverting piece of social drama.
The film is episodic, interweaving multiple strands which are not really narratives so much as snapshots of different lives in a community. Towards the end, there is a single dramatic event which disrupts all these lives, bringing into sharp focus their qualities and faults - a device familiar from (less drab) films like Short Cuts and Magnolia.
As with all of Leigh's productions, this is very much an ensemble piece. Leigh is famous for developing his scripts out of many months' worth of improvisational work with his actors: this makes for a strange blend of dialogue, half naturalistic, half contrived; and, perhaps unsurpisingly, there seems to be a direct correlation between the quality of characterisation and the quality of acting. Timothy Spall, for example, is excellent, and his character, the contemplative, depressed minicab driver Phil Bassett, is complex and rounded. So is his quietly dignified daughter Rachel, played with extraordinary subtlety and restraint by Alison Garland. Equally excellent are Ruth Sheen as strong single mother Maureen, and Sally Hawkins as Sam, a teenage girl just discovering the dangerous power of her sexuality. Other, less sympathetic characters, however, like hopeless alcoholic Carol (Marion Bailey) and violent lad Jason (Daniel Mays), are little more than caricatures.
At times I found this film somewhat meandering, and felt that its script might have been tighter. Yet for the most part Leigh succeeds in teasing out suggestive parallels in his different characters' lives - never more effectively than when he explores the twinned themes of love and loneliness which hold the entire film together. Here Leigh has not quite reached the heights he achieved in Naked or Secrets and Lies, but nonetheless All or Nothing is a diverting piece of social drama.