(2008) One expects the worst, the other expects only happiness, and then they meet. English primary-school teacher Pauline "Poppy" Cross (Sally Hawkins), a free-spirited 30-year-old (unconcerned with having a mortgage, pension, or making provisions for her future), lives with her colleague and flat mate of ten years, Zoe (Alexis Zegerman): a pair of "old" maids.

Poppy has two sisters, Suzy, a student, and Helen, married and pregnant (reminding Poppy of her ticking biological clock), neither of whom possesses her quirky, ebullient, joyful nature.

While shopping in London, after browsing through a bookshop - she pulls a thick paperback from the shelf, British mathematical physicist Roger Penrose's The Road to Reality (a book of modern physics, over 1100 pages), and says: "Don't want to go in there" - she finds her bicycle has been pinched: "I didn't even get a chance to say good-bye."

She signs up for driving lessons, every noon on Saturdays, with Scott (Eddie Marsan), a humorless, uptight, easy-to-anger, controlling, sore-of-soul man. Poppy reminds me of the carefree characters depicted in TV commercials for whom nothing can be upsetting after a night's sleep on a Denver mattress. (She and Zoe share the same bed, but they're not lesbians, though she at first leads Scott to think so.)

Director/writer Mike Leigh presents a small, melodic, slice-of-life comedy with a serious undertone. Poppy takes flamenco lessons with her headmistress, Heather Stockman; gets drunk with Zoe, Suzy, and their friends; fearlessly shares a strange conversation at night with a stuttering tramp; and makes acquaintance with Tim (Samuel Roukin), a social worker, who gets at the underlying anger of a bully in her class.

Antithetical to her giggly, goofy personality and cheerfully enthusiastic approach to instruction, "Enraha" Scott is critical ("This car is a lethal weapon") of her from head to boots: "You celebrate chaos." Self-assured of his ability to teach anyone, saying he has never given up on a pupil, he shouts at Poppy: "All I ask is that you behave like an adult," to which she replies: "What? Like you, Scott?"

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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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