All or Nothing (2002)

Mike Leigh film about, what else?, the British working poor. The film follows three family's in a government subsidized housing project in London. The family of primary focus is the Bassetts, two middle aged aged parents and there roughly 20ish daughter and 18ish son, all living in the same home. Of the four of them three work, the father as a Taxi driver (but he sleeps in until around noon so only earns about half a days wages), the mother as a check out girl at a grocery store, and the daughter cleaning at an old folks home (where a creepy sixtyish fellow worker seems to have an eye for her). The son, Rory, is an unpleasant fellow, he's overweight, doesn't work, and is rude and unappreciative. The family is unhappy, disenchanted, and just making it by. Like nearly all the people in this film, there also not very good looking, and in the case of the father, son, and daughter all grossly overweight.

The second family consists of single mother Maureen and her daughter (whose probably in her early twenty's) who gets pregnant by a worthless boyfriend. Maureen had her daughter by a man she says she know "for all of 5 minutes" before her only child was conceived. Interestingly Maureen seems the happiest, most well adjusted of the central players in this film. The third family consists of two alcoholic parents and a daughter, again in her early 20's. The daughter here, played by Sally Hawkins (whose about the only name in this film, the rest of the cast is good but largely unknown) attempts to steal the no good boyfriend away from her secretly pregnant neighbour, and becomes the object of desire for a mentally maladjusted young man.

A consistent stream in this film is that the parents are mostly exhausted, they work, but have little money and hope, so each deal with there resentment and disillusionment in there own way, and for the mostly part rather ineffectively. The children tend to be rude little brats (with the exception of Rachel Basset whose quite and withdrawn), always fighting in one way or another, and again making little of there lives.

When morbidly obese Rory Bassett has a heart attack, it becomes an emotional catalyst that could change all there lives, or they might just try harder for a little while and then sink back into there perpetual funk, at the end we don't know. Mike Leigh likes to take us places we don't usually go in movies, he likes to explore the emotional world of the poor and disposed, he dose so truthfully and always seems to have something a little new to say. It's a downer, but its solid and knowing. Grade: B+