Looks and Smiles

The film is set in Sheffield. The years are the early eighties. Mick is a young man. He lives with his parents. He looks for work but there is none. Every two weeks he collects his dole money. He spends his free time working on his motorbike. His closest friend Alan joins the army. His job there is repairing tanks. Alan is sent to Belfast before long. Mick meets Karen at a disco. Karen works in a shoe shop. She lives with her mother, whose marriage has just broken up. Karen misses her father. Something grows between the two of them. Two different roads lie in front of Mick. Graham Green and Carolyn Nicholson take the leads in Ken Loach’s French and British coproduction of 1981.