#659: LEIGH, Mike: Life Is Sweet (1990)

LEIGH, Mike (United Kingdom)
Life Is Sweet [1990]
Spine #659
Blu-ray


This invigorating film from Mike Leigh was his first international sensation. Melancholy and funny by turns, it is an intimate portrait of a working-class family in a suburb just north of London — an irrepressible mum and dad (Alison Steadman and Jim Broadbent) and their night-and-day twins, a bookish good girl and a troubled, ill-tempered layabout (Claire Skinner and Jane Horrocks). Leigh and his typically brilliant cast create, with extraordinary sensitivity and craft, a vivid, lived-in story of ordinary existence, in which even modest dreams — such as the father's desire to open a food truck — carry enormous weight.

103 minutes
Color
2.0 Surround
1:85:1 aspect ratio
Criterion Release 2013
Director/Writer


Mike Leigh was 47 when he wrote and directed Life is Sweet.

Other Leigh films in the Collection:

#890: Meantime (1984)
#307: Naked (1993)
#1070: Secrets & Lies (1996)
#558: Topsy-Turvy (1999)

The Film

Film Rating (0-60):

60

The Extras

The Booklet

Twenty page booklet featuring an essay by critic David Sterritt.

Commentary

Featuring director Leigh.

Audio recording

Of a 1991 interview with Leigh at the National Film Theatre in London.

Five short films

Written and directed by Leigh for the proposed television series Five-Minute Films, with a new audio introduction by Leigh.

Extras Rating (0-40):

39

60 + 39 =

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