High Hopes

Ruth Sheen, Lesley Manville    w/d Mike Leigh

His first film stands out as a funny, clever, bitter, subtle expose of the pains inflicted on the British working class by thatcherism.

Yuppies and their ilk are held up for ridicule and contempt...while the limited options available to the less privileged are starkly portrayed. Fine acting by RS. LM goes way over the top in her portrayal of a grasping yuppie who's gone completely around the bend of materialism and lost sight of any humanism that might have been in her originally.

Love the irony of the senile old woman atop an apartment building overlooking an industrial area of London exclaiming in wonder...'why it's the top of the world!'

7