Telluride by the Sea: Happy Go Lucky
North Londoner Poppy (Sally Hawkins) is optimistic, in-your-face, terminally adorable. She’s fearless, resilient, good at what she does and has a fairly solid handle on her relationship with her dysfunctional family. She is, in other words, something of a secular saint—not at all your usual Mike Leigh character. As Poppy attempts to heal everyone around her, from a bullied child to a mad homeless man, we have the choice to love her or hate her. The question Leigh asks in his funniest, juiciest investigation of working-class life yet might be: You can’t make everyone happy, but there’s no harm in trying … is there? Hawkins won Berlin’s Silver Bear for Best Actress.
(U.K., 2008, 118m)