All or NothingIan Waldron-Mantgani
"Fuck off!" So everyone seems to be saying in "All or Nothing". Kids scream it at each other, and at their parents. The parents scream it at each other just the same, and to random people, and random noises, and it's just not very creative, is it? Mike Leigh's film, which follows a group of families living in the same block of London flats, is, essentially, a rehash of the ambience from other Mike Leigh films. Every moaning piece of dialogue, every elegiac strain of string music, every cut between different groups of performers and every little comic icebreaker seems to come from a programmed procession. Normally I can sit back and allow Leigh films to draw me in through their natural curiosity about human nature. In "All or Nothing", I was guessing lines under my breath before the players spoke them. Leigh's filmmaking technique is usually to come up with a basic narrative framework, give his actors a little background on their characters and let everyone improvise the dialogue and rhythm of scenes during rehearsals. I simply do not believe that happened with this project, unless the entire cast and crew were watching so much of Leigh's back catalogue that they got disconnected with any other kind of reality. "All or Nothing" stars Timothy Spall as an unsuccessful taxi driver named Phil, another of his big lug characters that slouch around with tired face and puppy-dog eyes, meaning well but never quite managing to make those around them happy. His longtime companion is Penny (Lesley Manville), who works at Safeway and plods through life with expressions suggesting weariness of her children and resentment of her man. The kids in the family are Rory (James Corden), a layabout with a chip on his shoulder, who is responsible for many of the F-words, and Rachel (Alison Garland), who is a shy, quiet hospital cleaner with nothing to define herself. Phil is a colleague of Ron (Paul Jesson), who lives a couple of flats away with his crazy alcoholic wife Carol (Marion Bailey) and a teenage temptress daughter named Samantha (Sally Hawkins). Also down the hall is Penny's workmate Maureen (Ruth Sheen), the only character in the movie who seems to have grown comfortable with life. She isn't even bothered by her caustic daughter Donna (Helen Coker), who uses almost as many F-words as Rory, and, like Jane Horrocks in Leigh's "Life is Sweet" or Claire Rushbrook in "Secrets & Lies", is a short-tempered, mousy-haired twentysomething, dividing her time between screwing her loser boyfriend and sitting around waiting for him. Nothing much happens in terms of plot, not even to reveal the layers of the characters. The screenplay delights in dropping mentions of fish and chips, goin' down the pub and being tired from work, and there is a pathetic scene in which Spall goes around his house collecting change from the family, so he can go to his boss at the end of the week and pretend that he has made more money than he actually has. Leigh's films are known for identifying with working-class Brits in a style of comic and dramatic ease, but there's a desperation about this one, like it's clawing for some sense of how the proles go about their business. As if dutifully following the commandments of bad melodrama, the movie's fat kid has a heart attack and its snappy girl turns out to be pregnant (in a story thread that not only goes unresolved, but hardly gets mentioned after a couple of emphatic scenes). The film's ending finally sees Spall say what's on his mind -- he's tired of his life, and he can't stand having the feeling that his woman no longer respects him. It's a powerful speech, but two hours is too long to wait for a probing of such shallow depths. We learn not a thing by the conclusion that we could not have guessed in the opening ten minutes. I missed the opportunity to see "All or Nothing" at Sheffield's UGC last Friday, where the evening screening was followed by a question-and-answer session with Leigh. I was annoyed at the time, but perhaps my lack of attendance was a stroke of good fortune. There is nothing I would have wanted to say to the filmmaker, who I normally respect and admire, except to ask why his new release is so lazy, miserable and smug. This is one of the biggest disappointments of the year.
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