by Allan Fish
(UK 2010 130m) DVD1/2
Allotment blues
p Georgina Lowe d/w Mike Leigh ph Dick Pope ed Jon Gregory m Gary Yershon art Simon Beresford
Jim Broadbent (Tom), Ruth Sheen (Gerri), Lesley Manville (Mary), Oliver Maltman (Joe), Peter Wight (Ken), Phil Davis (Jack), Imelda Staunton (Janet), Martin Savage (Carl), David Bradley (Ronnie), Karina Fernandez (Katie), Ralph Ineson, Edna Doré,
There’s much to be read into that title; another year, same old same old. Seasons come and go, nothing changes. There’s always been a sense of that to Mike Leigh’s world, his own little microcosm of middle class suburbia. Another year, another film. In some ways it was a brave new world for Leigh, after the premature death of his long-time producer collaborator Simon Channing-Williams and it was his first in ‘Scope format. In all other respects, it’s Leigh as we know and love him, but as he grows older, we grow older with him, and as I do so one is left as disappointed as his characters.
These characters are familiar, the husband and wife happy with each other but not with those around them; he works studying clay around the world, she as a counsellor at a local practice. Their son Joe is a solicitor and keeps himself to himself, but finally brings round his girlfriend Katie. Gerri’s work colleague Mary, increasingly clingy, upsets the apple cart when it becomes clear that, despite her being old enough to be his mother, she has a ridiculous attachment to Joe. Then there’s Tom’s brother, Ronnie, who’s stricken with grief after the death of his wife, and Ken, an overweight single man who, lonely himself, won’t retire because it’s all he has in life. (more…)