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Mike Leigh's All or Nothing attempts nothing he hasn't done
before and done better. I was hoping that after Topsy-Turvy,
his marvelous movie about Gilbert and Sullivan, Leigh would continue
to venture beyond the borders of what has become all-too-familiar
terrain for him: the sodden lives of the contemporary working class.
Leigh has done as much as any English director to give those lives
a fullness, and even in a half-baked effort like All or Nothing,
his empathy is certainly on view. But the empathy never lifts off
-- never becomes poetry. It doesn't help that Leigh indulges his
unfortunate habit of larding the soundtrack with draggy, mournful
music, heavy on the cello. We're stuck for over two hours watching
a gaggle of dispirited people in a housing project in South London,
and their existences don't really add up to much of a panorama.
Leigh must feel the same way, because he eventually settles on one
narrative about a sad-faced cabbie, Phil Bassett (played by Leigh
veteran Timothy Spall, who looks like a Wind in the Willows
version of Christopher Hitchens), and his sad-faced family. Phil
is so inchoate with the blahs that he seems retarded; his wife,
Penny (the wonderful Lesley Manville), doesn't get much succor from
him or her two very overweight children. Her son spends most of
the movie making a large crease in the sofa and yelling "Fuck off."
We have to take Penny's word for it when she says that Phil used
to make her laugh. (1 hr. 27 mins.; R) — PTER RAINER
Opens October 25
• Showtimes
& tickets (movietickets.com)
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