High Hopes

In London, Cyril is a motorcycle courier and Shirley is a gardener. His elderly mother lives alone in a gentrifying street with a wealthy upper-middle-class couple next door. His sister has built a life on money and appearance. The film sets three couples side by side and shows how completely they fail to understand each other. Mike Leigh directed. The title comes from Cyril and Shirley's badly placed optimism. The critic Gilbert Adair summarised its position: where Auberon Waugh urged audiences to fear the working classes, Leigh asks them to trust their liberal ideals rather than their anxieties. Leigh worked as usual from improvisation sessions rather than a finished script, a method that kept financiers away for years. Part of the gap between Meantime in 1983 and this film comes from that difficulty. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 92 percent and Metacritic at 84. Roger Ebert gave it four stars and called it an alive and challenging film. It won three European Film Awards, with Ruth Sheen taking Best Actress. Who it is for: viewers interested in Thatcher-era Britain and Leigh's portraits of class. Who it is not for: anyone bothered by caricature. The rich couple next door are deliberately overdrawn, and that is what the film gets criticised for most.