Brixton gets Happy with Mike Leigh

By Anna Sayburn

One of the reasons I love living in London is that going to the cinema needn’t mean driving to an out-of-town, plastic, popcorn-scented multiplex. We have stylish, independent cinemas showing a wide range of films, in lovingly restored traditional picture houses. And you can enjoy a glass of wine with the film, instead of a cardboard bucket of coke.

My local is the Ritzy cinema in Brixton, which on Wednesday offered another reason to be cheerful – a preview screening of Mike Leigh’s new film Happy-Go-Lucky, followed by a question and answer session with the director himself.

The film follows the life of irrepressibly-cheerful primary school teacher Poppy, as she attempts to spread a little happiness to her friends, family, pupils and – less successfully – her rage-filled driving instructor.

Leigh revealed that the classroom scenes were researched and shot in Southwark primary schools, with local children from the Pilgrims Way school in Rotherhithe. The actresses playing teachers all sat in on classes, got to know the children and, in the film, took the classes themselves.

‘We haven’t got those awful stage school monsters, they’re real kids in their own school, so it’s very natural,’ Leigh told us, admitting that

Stage school kids are absolutely revolting and to be avoided at all costs.

Leigh was born in Salford, near Manchester, but has had close links to London since moving south to train at RADA, and at the London Film School, which in those days had offices in Brixton. He talked of having his interview ‘in a room above a shop in Electric Avenue’, just round the corner from the Ritzy.

His first feature film, Bleak Moments, was set in Tulse Hill, and indeed all his films have been shot in London. Although, he explained, that’s not entirely his choice.

‘Every time I start a new film, I say ‘It would be great to go somewhere else or travel around,’ and we go to great lengths to work out if we can afford to do that. And every time what comes back is no, you really get more for your money if you make the film in London.’

However, he says, he’s happy with that, as ‘London is such a comprehensive place. I just regard it as a place to tell stories. [The film] is about people, feelings, relationships, education, love – and none of these things are exclusive to London.’

To me, the most compelling character in the film is Poppy’s driving instructor Scott, played with simmering intensity by Eddie Marsan. I’ve been a fan of Eddie since he was a regular actor at the tiny but staggeringly good Greenwich Studio Theatre, in the mid-1990s. So I was keen to hear about how the character of Scott had come about.

‘Eddie and I laboured together to create this monster,’ said Leigh. ‘He [Scott] is a very sad case. But we didn’t say ‘let’s make a monster’. We created a three-dimensional person. The reason Eddie’s performance works is because we really have invented this whole person’s life experience, even though we don’t show it all on the film, and you get a real sense of somebody… with lots of layers and things on the go.’

Much has been made of the fact that Happy-Go-Lucky is a much brighter film than Leigh’s previous film Vera Drake. Leigh agreed that he had felt the need to lighten up a little, although perhaps not for the most cheerful reasons.

‘We’re in a desperate state… destroying the world and destroying each other. But there are people out there just getting on with it, not least the teachers. So I wanted to say something positive about that.’

Well, the film certainly brightened up my day, even if we are all doomed.

Happy-Go-Lucky is on general release from Friday 17 April.

Photo: Thanks to bongo vongo on Flickr.com (CCL)