Rent Bleak Moments (1971)

Not for me - Bleak Moments review by MH

Sorry, I just didn't get it and found the characters either obnoxious (Hilda) or boring (Sylvia), and when I realised I couldn't care less what happened to them I switched off. Not a fan of Mike Leigh.

Chamber piece. - Bleak Moments review by Steve

Mike Leigh's debut film is a characteristic exploration of the comedy of awkwardness. He received meagre funding from the BFI set aside for experimental cinema. And it was well earned. While this eventually becomes grimly funny, it seems like the intention is to achieve a heightened realism rather than to conventionally entertain. Some scenes are excruciating.

Anne Raitt plays a desperately lonely typist approaching middle age who looks after her sister, who has learning disabilities. Though the carer is profoundly inhibited, it eventually becomes clear that everyone she knows is even more shy and frustrated. Including her colleague, brilliantly performed by Joolia Cappleman, who fills the emptiness with crackpot gimmicks.

The scene when the unloved secretary has a date with an incredibly repressed middle aged teacher is close to being unwatchable. And yet it is uncomfortably funny. Leigh has a rigid technique which enhances the atmosphere of terrible anxiety. Repetitive sounds are amplified until they become irritating. Characters are isolated in wide, empty streets.

The camera tilts, but never tracks or zooms. The characters feel trapped in close up within the static frame. There is no soundtrack, just the ambient noise of a badly played guitar and an out of tune piano. But, we come to care for these people, isolated and tortured by their inability to communicate. There is no politics. Just an overwhelming pity for human sadness.