A pair of sisters contemplate their miserable lives in Mike Leigh’s first film, BLEAK MOMENTS
BLEAK MOMENTS (LOVING MOMENTS) (Mike Leigh, 1971)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Monday, September 22, 6:30
Series runs September 19-25
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.com
British master filmmaker Mike Leigh’s feature debut, 1971’s Bleak Moments, is just that, a series of grim scenes involving five main characters who are not exactly the most scintillating of conversationalists. But slowly, the dark, dreary opening evolves into a wickedly funny black comedy about different sorts of relationships (familial, sexual, professional), comprising episodes that help define the film’s alternate title, Loving Moments. It would be hard for Sylvia (Anne Raitt) to live a more boring life. A typist at an accounting firm, she spends most of her free time at home taking care of her sister, Hilda (Sarah Stephenson), who suffers from a kind of autism. Hilda works with Pat (Joolia Cappleman), a strange bird obsessed with movies, Maltesers, and Hilda. Meanwhile, teacher Peter (Eric Allan), who seems terrified of people, shows interest, if you can call it that, in all three women. And Norman (Mike Bradwell), a wannabe singer-songwriter, has moved into Sylvia’s garage, where he plays music that intrigues Hilda. Over a short period of time, the three women and two men sit around, go for walks, eat, drink, and, mostly, say very little to one another, their tentativeness palpable, each one terribly frightened in his or her own way of what life has to offer, of connecting. But Leigh isn’t making fun of them; instead, Bleak Moments is a lovingly drawn story of real life, where people don’t always know exactly what to say or do or how to react in various situations.
Peter (Eric Allan) and Sylvia (Anne Raitt) go on a date to remember in BLEAK MOMENTS
Originally mounted as a stage production, Bleak Moments transitioned to the big screen with the financial help of Albert Finney. As became his trademark, Leigh, who would go on to make such highly regarded fare as High Hopes, Life Is Sweet, Naked, Secrets & Lies, Topsy-Turvy, and Happy-Go-Lucky, had the actors first embody the roles in rehearsals and preparation, giving the film a believability despite the absurdity of it all. The overwhelming despair and hesitation demonstrated by the characters becomes painfully funny, especially when Peter takes Sylvia to a Chinese restaurant and, afterward, she tries to ply him with sherry. (Might the man who stares at them in the restaurant be a forerunner of the man who mocks Rupert Pupkin in the diner in The King of Comedy?) In January 2013, Leigh discussed Bleak Moments with the Guardian, at first comparing it to watching paint dry and acknowledging that some people thought it was “the most boring film in the world” while also explaining, “From this distance, I cautiously feel I’m allowed to feel a touch of paternal pride in my young self. With such brief life experience, did I really invent this painful, tragic-comic tale of a beautiful but suppressed young woman, tied to her elder, mentally challenged sister? I guess I’m astonished at the maturity and sophistication of my achievement, not to mention its pathos and irony. . . . I’ve tried to vary my films considerably, but I would have to admit that Bleak Moments remains, in some ways, the mother of all Mike Leigh films. And I’m very proud of it.” As well he should be.
Bleak Moments is screening September 22 at 6:30 as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center series “NYFF Opening Acts,” a collection of early films by eleven directors showing new works at this year’s New York Film Festival, including Abel Ferrara’s Body Snatchers, Mia Hansen-Løve’s All Is Forgiven, Olivier Assayas’s Cold Water, and Alain Resnais’s Love Unto Death.