Volta™ – Irish Independent Film Online

In the years between Bleak Moments and his next cinema release, High Hopes in 1988, Leigh wrote and directed nine television plays, short films and theatrical productions including 1977s acclaimed Abigail’s Party, a satire on middle-class manners and attitudes starring Leigh’s then-wife Alison Steadman.

The critical and commercial success of High Hopes opened the gate for Leigh’s films, which have followed in a steady train in the subsequent decades. Steadman again starred as Wendy in the bittersweet family drama Life is Sweet in 1991, which also featured Jim Broadbent, Timothy Spall and Claire Skinner, all of whom would form Leigh’s repertory company of actors. Leigh’s next film Naked, released in 1993, had a darker tone with David Thewlis playing Johnny, an unstable, acid-tongued Manchester drifter who flees to London, encountering a series of similarly disaffected people over a number of weeks. Leigh won the Best Director award for Naked at Cannes in 1993, with Thewlis picking up the award for Best Actor.

Leigh returned to Cannes in 1996 with Secrets & Lies, winning the Palme d’Or for his story of a woman who meets the daughter she gave up for adoption twenty years before. Brenda Blethyn also won the Best Actress award at Cannes, alongside a Golden Globe and a BAFTA, with the film also picking up five Oscar nominations, including Best Director and Best Picture at the 1996 Academy Awards. The following year, Leigh completed Career Girls, which reunited the director with his Naked star Katrin Cartlidge and Belfast-born actress Lynne Steadman in a story about two women, friends in university, who rekindle their friendship six years later, while working in London.

1997s comedy drama Topsy-Turvy, was a departure from Leigh's usual contemporary drama, being a period piece about the well-known light opera composers Gilbert and Sullivan, but continued the director’s fascination with rounded, human characters. Jim Broadbent and Alan Corduner’s composing duo are charming and charismatic but Leigh’s achievement is in setting their historical lives and work amongst a vividly depicted, and loosely arranged, tableau of actors, lovers, wives and backstage craftsmen. In 2002, Leigh returned to small-scale, contemporary urban drama for All Or Nothing, starring his regular actors Timothy Spall, Lesley Manville and Ruth Sheen alongside newcomer James Corden in a story of a working-class taxi-driver struggling with a dysfunctional family life.

Vera Drake, released two years later but set in the London of the 1950s, focused on the titular character (indelibly played by Imelda Staunton) who helps desperate women rid themselves of unwanted pregnancies at a time when abortion was illegal in the UK. Vera Drake won a number of high-profile awards, including BAFTAs for Leigh and Staunton, the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and picking up three Oscar nominations, for Best Actress, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.

Leigh’s mood lightened considerably for 2008s Happy-Go-Lucky, which starred Sally Hawkins as a preternaturally cheerful primary school teacher who, among other adventures, learns how to drive a car. In 2010, Leigh released Another Year, about a year in the life of a salt-of-the-earth married couple, Tom and Geri (regulars Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen), and the people around them, including Lesley Manville and David Bradley.

Leigh has a unique approach to working, that results in unique films. He begins his film projects without a script, starting from a basic premise which is developed through improvisation by the actors. The director works with each actor to develop a character who is based, in the first place, on someone the actor knows personally. After months of rehearsal, Leigh writes the outline of a shooting script, which is then continuously revised while filming on location.

Key Films: Life Is Sweet (1990), Naked (1993), Secrets & Lies (1996), Career Girls (1997), Vera Drake (2004), Happy-Go-Lucky (2008), Another Year (2010)