Another Year
Mike Leigh's affecting Another Year takes the form of a series of encounters between a contented middle-aged couple and the friends and relatives who interrupt their lives over the course of four seasons. Gerri (Ruth Sheen), a counselor, and Tom (Jim Broadbent), a geologist, are the still center around which other, mostly deeply unsettled lives orbit.
In the summer, they receive a visit from Tom's pal Ken (Peter Wight), whose constant drinking and gluttony are desperate attempts to compensate for a life lacking emotional engagement. Ken feels that life has passed him by, and he resents the young who are still in the thick of it. Gerri and Tom's lonesome son Joe (Oliver Maltman) is a source of some concern until, in the autumn, he introduces them to his new girlfriend Katie (Karina Fernandez). In the winter, they attend Tom's sister-in-law's funeral and persuade his brother Ronnie (David Bradley), broken and confused by the loss of his wife, to stay with them for a while.
Cycling in and out of Tom and Gerri's domestic life is Mary (Lesley Manville), a secretary who works with Gerri—and an alcoholic who exists on the cusp of disaster. Self-delusional and self-pitying, Mary dwells on the failed relationships of her youth yet presents herself as the continual object of unwanted male attention. At a summer barbecue she flirts with Joe, who gently deflects her advances. Later, when she comes over for tea the day he brings Katie over to meet his folks, Mary can't conceal her rage at this woman who's had the audacity to take hold of a man Mary covets but who has never shown the least romantic interest in her. Manville's performance is one of the most harrowing and moving depictions of lonely hearts desperation the movies have given us. Watching it, you veer between embarrassment and pity.
