Sally Hawkins owns every second of this movie with what is easily the best female performance I've seen from 2008 so far. Her Poppy is a character that I can definitely understand why people find so gratingly annoying, but I loved to death. She is a goofy, exuberant, wildly alive person who sees no problem in enjoying life to the fullest. Sure she has setbacks (in the first scene of the film, her bike is stolen) but she doesn't see the point of living life with a sour face and as a result she does whatever she can to embrace everything, and try to help other people embrace life as well. As someone who goes through life looking mostly at the negative, I really admired Poppy and wish that I could live like she does. And Sally Hawkins didn't hold back on that brightness for a second, breathing so much joy into every moment she was on screen. She brought immense life to the character, to the story and to the film.
It's a wildly hilarious story that put a smile on my face through most of it, but definitely tapped into Mike Leigh's ability to devastate from time to time. This is most prominent when it comes to the Eddie Marsan's character, Scott, Poppy's driving instructor and polar opposite. Whereas she is an optimist in every sense of the word, he is an absolute pessimist. Their back and forth starts off incredibly humorous and provided an insane amount of laughs for me throughout most of their scenes. But then we start to understand his character a bit more, as Poppy probes into his childhood and home life and we see that he begins having an attraction to her. But his bleak outlook on life means that he can't approach her like one normally would, and instead is ashamed when she sees him standing across the street from her flat, just watching it. Their final scene is incredibly poignant for both characters, as Poppy sees what kind of impact her approach to life can have on other people that she doesn't even realize. Marsan's performance began as aggressive and charismatically hilarious, but ended up being absolutely tragic.
A wonderful, very well-acted and directed film that is one of my favorites of '08.
It's a wildly hilarious story that put a smile on my face through most of it, but definitely tapped into Mike Leigh's ability to devastate from time to time. This is most prominent when it comes to the Eddie Marsan's character, Scott, Poppy's driving instructor and polar opposite. Whereas she is an optimist in every sense of the word, he is an absolute pessimist. Their back and forth starts off incredibly humorous and provided an insane amount of laughs for me throughout most of their scenes. But then we start to understand his character a bit more, as Poppy probes into his childhood and home life and we see that he begins having an attraction to her. But his bleak outlook on life means that he can't approach her like one normally would, and instead is ashamed when she sees him standing across the street from her flat, just watching it. Their final scene is incredibly poignant for both characters, as Poppy sees what kind of impact her approach to life can have on other people that she doesn't even realize. Marsan's performance began as aggressive and charismatically hilarious, but ended up being absolutely tragic.
A wonderful, very well-acted and directed film that is one of my favorites of '08.