Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
During a year, a very content couple approaching retirement are visited by friends and family less happy with their lives.
Mike Leigh's quietly devastating character study earns its strongest marks for acting — Lesley Manville's Ruth is one of the great screen performances of the decade, perfectly calibrated and heartbreaking, with Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen equally naturalistic as the contented anchor couple. The plot is deliberately low-key, structured around the four seasons, which gives it rhythm but limits dramatic stakes — it's a film where nothing much 'happens' yet everything registers. Cinematography is workmanlike Leigh — functional and observational but not visually ambitious. Novelty is solid: the seasonal structure and Leigh's ensemble improvisational method give it a distinctive voice, though it sits comfortably within his established mode. The ending — Mary silently at the dinner table, excluded and adrift — is quietly powerful but understated by design, resisting resolution in a way that is purposeful rather than revelatory.