Bleak Moments

(UK)

Autumn/Memorial. Director Mike Leigh; Producer Les Blair; Screenplay Mike Leigh; Camera Bahram Manoochehri; Editor Les Blair; Music Mike Bardwell; Art Director Richard Rambant

Anne Raitt
Sarah Stephenson
Eric Allan
Joolia Cappleman
Mike Bradwell
Liz Smith

A film with downbeat themes of solitude, difficulties of communication, coping with a retarded 29-year-old sister, it has enough human insight sans mawkishness or undue sentimentality to make it wryly funny, with its recognition of human foibles that gives it an edge, charm and warmth, tempered with compassion.

Anne Raitt, a handsome, heavyset woman, works in an office with a candy-eating friend who dreams of a possible, but not probable, marriage. Raitt has a quiet suitor who turns out to be impotent. Their night out in a Chinese restaurant is a revealing setpiece. Raitt has rented her garage to a hippie who publishes an underground newspaper. As the hippie leaves, all revert to their original bleak but never depressing lives, which will go on unless something good or better comes along or they take a more affirmative stand.

(Color) Extract of a review from 1972. Running time: 110 MIN.

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