Movie Blog: 'Another Year' Drifts Into Bleak Winter

Tom and Gerri anchor the 365 days (or thereabout) that make up Another Year. They have a cozy, entirely lived-in marriage, the sort of pairing that makes everyone else around them more hopeful for their own romantic prospects, even as all evidence points to the contrary. Therein lies the formula to the film's comedy, as well as its tragedy.

Not that there aren't chinks in the armor of writer-director Mike Leigh's seemingly impenetrable duo. Tom (Jim Broadbent) can't help but regard some of the more pathetic cases Gerri (Ruth Sheen, brilliantly, mystically centered) brings into their fold, none more prominent than the raw, needy, self-delusional Mary (Lesley Manvile), a woman pushing 50 who can't seem to rebound from the aftereffects of a nasty but necessary divorce.

As she bounces from unsuccessful trips to the pub to even more embarrassing flirtations with Tom and Gerri's son, Mary all but embodies the maxim William Holden proffers to Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard: "There's nothing tragic about being 50. Not unless you're trying to be 25."

As Mary, Lesley Manville comes on like a force of nature, and not necessarily a welcomed one. Manville and Leigh's genius is to take a character that would normally invite many other actresses to win audience affections vis-a-vis warm, blowzy theatricality and to, instead, present her as a pulsating wound that simply refuses to close up, to heal. It's incredibly difficult to like Mary, and by the film's end, it dawns on you that Tom and Gerri may be trying even harder than you to do so.

But they are not saints. Leigh is canny enough to show that there are differences to how Tom and Gerri deal with Mary's increasingly imposing and alcohol-lubricated visits and how they react to the arrival of the, if anything, more booze-dependent, more self-defeating old friend Ken (Peter Wight, fantastically pre-coronary). Whereas Mary's barely disguised pleas for sympathy are often rebuffed with pinched social graces (in place of open-armed reciprocation), Tom and Gerri seem all too willing to look beyond Ken's numerous faults, such as his total disregard for his own health.

With Another Year, Mike Leigh doesn't quite manage to come up with some of the lovely, unexpected nuances of character that marked the best moments of Secrets & Lies, Vera Drake and Happy-Go-Lucky. But his touch still resonates with something deeper than mere sympathy.