Jeff Wells buys into the Hawkins hype

As Kris pointed out earlier today, Jeff Wells is no fan of Mike Leigh’s “Happy-Go-Lucky.” I suspected from the get-go that the film and Poppy, its gobby, exaggeratedly high-energy protagonist, would polarise audiences – but I still find Wells’ argument does a disservice both to the film and to his own critical perspicacity.

In his extended critique, Wells judges the film to a rather alarming extent simply on the basis of his loathing for Poppy herself – going so far as to call her, with typical Wells dramatics, an “emotional fascist.” More crucially, he makes the error of assuming that the perspectives of Poppy and Leigh himself are interchangeable – an interpretation that, in my view, ignores a considerable portion of the film’s irony and pathos. (If anything, the film’s fundamental message is that even the most oppressive optimists are incapable of changing the world around them.)

But no matter. For all his personal dislike of the film, Wells can see the skill involved in the whole endeavour, and is quick to credit the achievement of Best Actress contender Sally Hawkins:

It is probably inevitable that Sally Hawkins … will be talked up as a Best Actress nominee once the film starts showing around. An elementary-school teacher who happy-vibes just about everything and everyone, Polly is an unstoppable alpha dispenser — spirited, effervescent — and Hawkins certainly inhabits her whole-hog.

She carries “Happy-Go-Lucky,” she carries its spirit, and she does handle herself well in the sad-shock scenes at the end of the film with Eddie Marsan, the driving instructor with the correct manner and ferociously uptight, anti-immigrant attitude. In fact, the last 15 to 20 minutes contain the best stuff in the film, and I throughly respect Hawkins for her performance in this section. She handles her scenes with quiet maturity and resigned grace.

This kind of reluctant admiration suggests to me that Hawkins in conclusively in the race, even if the film could still go either way. As Kris said, this one is gonna divide people right down the middle. For every Jeff Wells, there will be a Patrick Goldstein. At the very least, after an incredibly dull spell for specialty film, it’s nice to have a title that provokes some argument.