This week, Director Mike Leigh (Happy-Go-Lucky, Vera Drake, Topsy-Turvy) brings us the incisive Another Year. Leigh delicately crafts a witty, yet tragic, and fascinating portrait of ordinary people. The people feel real and recognizable as British middle class. The main couple, Gerri and Tom, played beautifully by Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen, is masterful. Their relationships with flighty Mary, ill-mannered Ken, and bereaved Ronnie demonstrate the couple’s good hearted natures. Their marriage is the envy of most of their friends and they are quietly grateful.
Time passes with the seasons during the film, shot in tandem to Tom and Gerri working in their vegetable garden. But things get awkward when Mary flirts and prods Joe, Tom and Gerri’s 30-year old son, for a date and is visibly upset when he brings home a girlfriend that the family adores. This interrupts the otherwise placid life of happily married couple. Love and loneliness are depicted equally in this revealing film of human truths. The cozy contentment of Tom and Gerri’s long lasting marriage is precisely contrasted to the troubled group. Similar to Sophia Coppola’s Somewhere, this film may move slow but tells a rich story of humanity.
There is no screening for March 16 because of March Break.
There is no screening for March 16 because of March Break.
BUFS returns on March 23 with the Canadian film Small Town Murder Songs. the film follows a violent crime that shakes up life in a small Mennonite town in Ontario, especially for a cop with a past. The film stars Peter Stormare, Martha Plimpton and Jill Hennessy.
March 30 will be Barney's Version, starring Paul Giamatti based on the novel by Canadian author, Mordecai Richler.
Followed by the recent adaptation of Jane Eyre by Cary Fukunaga on April 6.