Leave it to Mike Leigh to bring you down with a beautifully spun story about people living in a nondescript apartment complex, with no rewards for there daily struggles, just barely making a living.
The family this film revolves around are couple Phil and Penny Bassett and their two overweight kids Rachel and Rory. Phil is a cab driver, accepting of his dreary life and never making a fuss about anything. His wife Penny works on a supermarket check-out and has to put up with Rory's insults. Rory himself just lies around on the couch all day, jobless and lazy. Rachel works as a cleaner at an nursing home.
Their neighbor's life's are no better. There is the single mother, getting lip from her daughter, who gets abused by her boyfriend and finds out she is pregnant. One of Phil's colleagues lives in the complex, as well. His wife is a drunk and the daughter wanders about making trouble.
There are no ups in their lives, only the occasional down. It is one particular tragedy that breaks open the small collectives of wounds of the Bassett family but makes Phil and Penny understand each other a little better.
from Roger Ebert's review: Watch carefully how it happens, and who reacts to it and how, and you will see that Leigh has made all of the neighbors into characters whose troubles help to define their response.Sad and desperate, but also beautifully told and acted.
7/10
