Another Year

City Paper Grade: B+

by Sam Adams

DRINK TO THAT: The sticking point in Another Year is Lesley Manville's performance, loaded with nervous tics and high-register theatrics.

[ CITY PAPER GRADE: B+ ]

In Mike Leigh's dusky film, Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen) are a couple growing old with grace. Not so Gerri's co-worker Mary (Lesley Manville), a see-sawing emotional wreck who goes from optimistic delusion to hysterical despair over the course of Another Year 's four seasons. Their relationship is complicated by Mary's crush on the couple's son (Oliver Maltman), which grows increasingly desperate as her hope for the future sinks.

As is Leigh's habit, the roles were developed by the actors from scratch, which results in uncommonly rich and layered characterizations. Tom and Gerri are close to paragons at first, a warm and loving couple with a devoted son who are ready to sail into their twilight years. But when circumstances force them to choose between Mary and their own son, their response is swift and pitiless. If they've lasted this long, it's in part because they know when to close ranks.

The sticking point in Another Year is Manville's performance, loaded with the nervous tics that plague many of Leigh's female characters. I was ambivalent about whether her high-register theatrics were expressionist or merely over-the-top, and months after first seeing the film, the dilemma hasn't been resolved. Partly it's because she's in such stark, and purposeful, contrast to Broadbent and Sheen's mellow earthiness, but the tension between their styles doesn't resolve. It doesn't help when the son shows up with a girlfriend, played by Karina Fernandez, who's as manic as Mary is depressive. In the scenes where they're together, you wish you could simply lower the emotional volume a notch or two.

Even so, Another Year is one of Leigh's most openly philosophical movies, pondering the questions that come with advancing age and the far-reaching consequences of decisions made in even the most ordinary circumstances. You get the feeling you've lived with these people for the year the film spans, and learned something from them, even if it's by way of a bad example.