Another Year

A gifted director of women and an underrated director of films about women, Mike Leigh completes a most satisfying hat-trick - following Vera Drake and Happy-Go-Lucky - with yet another beautifully performed character piece. The focus here appears to be happily married north London couple Tom and Gerri (Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen), who are edging towards retirement, taking care of their allotment and fretting over their permanently single son. Into this suburban haven lurches Mary (Lesley Manville), a friend of Gerri's from work whose boozing, flakiness and emotional neediness - at first forgivable and even charming - quickly become a bore for the whole family. Manville's performance gives a fragility and poignancy to what could have been an unsympathetic character, providing Another Year with a deceptively profound emotional charge. And Leigh's simple, subtle film is all the richer for it.