High Hopes (1988)

Motorbike courier Cyril Bender (Phil Davis) and his partner, council garden worker Shirley (Ruth Sheen), are a left-leaning blue-collar couple who are just about getting by in a wretched little council flat in London’s Kings Cross area, surrounded by their cacti (one of which is called Thatcher “because it’s a pain in the arse”).

Cyril’s old widowed mum (Edna Doré) is doddering into senility.

She is the last council tenant on an otherwise gentrified street and her Yuppie young neighbour couple – Rupert and Laetitia Boothe-Braine (David Bamber and Lesley Manville) – are hilariously obnoxious.

Meanwhile, Cyril’s married sister, Valerie (Heather Tobias), drinks to forget the life she shares with her loutish, adulterous used-car salesman husband, Martin (Philip Jackson), in nightmarish nouveau-riche luxury in suburbia, while desperately trying to display upper-middle-class status to outrun their working-class roots.

When old Mrs Bender accidentally locks herself out of her home, her wealthy neighbours begrudgingly take her in. This incident culminates in a disastrous, cringe-inducing 70th surprise birthday party thrown by Valerie, which forces the family’s deep ideological and lifestyle conflicts to explode.

Writer/director Mike Leigh occasionally uses a battering ram where a satirical barb might do better, but the excesses of his comedy are outweighed by compassion, sincerity and unsparing wit.

The film was a major hit at the 1988 New York Film Festival

Cyril 
Phil Davis
Shirley 
Ruth Sheen
Mrs Bender
Edna Doré
Martin
Philip Jackson
Valerie
Heather Tobias
Lætitia Boothe-Braine
Lesley Manville
Rupert Boothe-Braine
David Bamber
Wayne
Jason Watkins
Suzi
Judith Scott
Martin’s Girlfriend
Cheryl Prime
Chemist Shop Assistant
Diane-Louise Jordan
Receptionist
Linda Beckett

Director
Mike Leigh