JennyMice Is Sweet - Natalie Purrchant
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Gidi KroonWhen I as a kid consciously started to watch films and notice the performances I liked, I became a big fan of the actresses Jodie Foster, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jane Horrocks and Juliette Binoche. Still am, but there's not so much news about them anymore. And yes, I was very aware those are all J's. Since then I've found great actresses of other generations whose name don't start with a J, I am a big fan of Stephanie Leonidas for example. People who have seen posts of me before most likely have seen me mentioning being a huge fan of Jenna Ortega. Yes, I'm back at the J's.
Now I'm watching an old film, one of my all time favourites, with Jane Horrocks: Life is Sweet. The film is directed and written by Mike Leigh, based on improvisations by the actors during rehearsals, as is his process. Mike Leigh is probably the only director I ever followed, once describing one of his films just with 'it's about... people' because I didn't know anything more to say and later realising this is accidentally a good description of all of his films. They're about people.
This one starts with a panning shot across a row of houses, suggesting that the family we are going to watch is just one of many and we could just as well have watched the story of the people in the other houses. (Edit: that's not actually this one, but another one. It was long ago I saw it...)
Life Is Sweet (1990)
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Life Is Sweet (1990)
Just north of London live Wendy, Andy, and their twenty-something twins, Natalie and Nicola. Wendy clerks in a shop, leads aerobics at a primary school, jokes like a vaudevillian, agrees to waitress at a friend's new restaurant and dotes on Andy, a cook who forever puts off home remodeling projects, and with a drunken friend, buys a broken down lunch wagon. Natalie, with short neat hair and a snappy, droll manner, is a plumber; she has a holiday planned in America, but little else. Last is Nicola, odd man out: a snarl, big glasses, cigarette, mussed hair, jittery fingers, bulimic, jobless, and unhappy. How they interact and play out family conflict and love is the film's subject.
Gerald Holubowicz