BLEAK MOMENTS Movie Review

Loving Moments

The word “bleak” in a movie's description can be counted on to sell almost as many tickets as such ever-popular adjectives as “boring,” “political,” or” demanding” When the offending word is actually in the title, however, there's a good chance the film will go totally unnoticed. Happily, this was not the case with Bleak Moments, the poignant and bracingly intelligent 1972 debut film by the then-29-year-old Mike Leigh. A tale of two sisters who have a lot to tell each other but don't know how, Bleak Moments envisions—in miniature—a world of wounded and hurt human beings, all desperate to communicate their longings but lacking the tools to do so. The product of numerous improvisational workshops involving Leigh and his cast, the finished product—as with all of Leigh's films including Naked, Secrets and Lies, and Career Girls—is meticulously and tightly constructed by the director. The wise and deeply grim humor, naturalistic performances, and non-schematic structure of Bleak Moments—together with its central dilemma surrounding human communication and the lack thereof—would become the hallmarks of Mike Leigh's later films, beginning with his breakthrough second feature (which didn't arrive until 17 years after Bleak Moments), the brilliant 1988 High Hopes.

NEXT STOP … Life is Sweet, Career Girls, Riff Raff

1971 110m/C GB Anne Raitt, Eric Allen, Mike Bradwell, Joolia Cappleman; D: Mike Leigh; W: Mike Leigh; C: Bahram Manocheri; M: Mike Bradwell. VHS WBF