Happy-Go-Lucky (15)

Just how bubbly is the heroine of Happy-Go-Lucky? Well, if you parachuted her into EastEnders she'd be greeted as the Antichrist. If you could bottle her spirit the makers of anti-depressants would go bust in a day.

Only Tony Blair, looking at what has become of Gordon, could fizz more with delight. So what in the name of miserablist, modern-day kitchen sink drama is she doing in a Mike Leigh film?

In his capacity as the bard of suburbia and the working class, Leigh's leading ladies have tended towards the complex, gritty and downright miserable. Vera Drake was a backstreet abortionist. Cynthia in Secrets and Lies was in a permanent state of nervous collapse. Then there was the monstrous Beverly, she of the shoulder pads and Demis Roussos habit, in Abigail's Party.

Happy-Go-Lucky's Poppy is the sugar to their salt, yet she could turn out to be Leigh's most controversial heroine to date. To know this hippy chick is to love or loathe her, and since she's the heart of Leigh's endeavour, the same goes for this comedy drama.

Happy-Go-Lucky opens with Poppy (Sally Hawkins) breezing into a bookshop and trying to engage the guy behind the counter in conversation. He looks at her sniffily, as if she had just stepped in something shortly before entering the premises. Poppy's not bothered. Later, finding her bike has been nicked, she merely looks around, forlorn, before closing the matter with: "Oh no, I didn't even get a chance to say goodbye!" Even Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music wasn't this bombproof.

But then, life is pretty sweet for this primary-school teacher. Poppy shares a flat in shabby old Camden Town with best friend Zoe (Alexis Zegerman). At weekends they go out with pals, get drunk, dance, sleep late and generally lead the lives of single girls. Think Sex and the City without the high incomes and matching underwear.

One of the things missing from Poppy's life is the ability to drive, which is where Scott (Eddie Marsan) comes in. While Poppy is a ray of sunshine, her driving instructor is one big thundercloud on legs. Marsan, who worked with Hawkins in Vera Drake, does a choice line in barely suppressed rage, and the banter between the pair provides the film with some of its funniest moments. The odious Scott hates most things – his pupils (particularly if they are young and black), other drivers, and inappropriate footwear (Poppy's high heeled boots). "It's not easy being you, is it?" Poppy asks.

Leigh's films, home to shouting matches and emotional Chernobyls, aren't always an easy watch either. In Happy-Go-Lucky, however, the angst is kept largely on the fringes. Poppy, for instance, has discovered one of the children in her class is a bully. Never one to let something get her down for long, nice Poppy calls in a nice man from social services and together they sit the boy down for a nice chat. Poppy suspects that Scott may have been a victim of bullying at school, but her attempts to ease the information out of him, and make him relax in general, aren't going to succeed so easily.

Poppy was a tough part to crack. Slowly, very slowly, Hawkins has to let the air out of the character or it will float away into caricature. It would have been easy to portray Poppy as nothing more than a grinning airhead, or give her a dark secret about which she is in frantic denial. Leigh, who also wrote the screenplay, is bolder. His Poppy is simply choosing to be happy. Faced with the proverbial glass of water she'll answer "half full with a cherry on top" every time. What, a defiant Leigh is asking, is so wrong with that?

Nothing, if you can believe wholeheartedly in the character. There are several occasions, though, when the tone is off and the story stretches credulity. At one point, Poppy's need to connect takes her into an abandoned building where she chats with a homeless man. A noble act, but it's hard to credit any woman doing such a thing on her own late at night. There's a sour note, too, when Poppy visits her married, pregnant, houseproud sister. Although everything ends perfectly pleasantly – as is the film's rule – the scenes have a patronising, vaguely cruel air, as if it were a crime to want matching furniture and a tidy home.

The picture's saving grace is Hawkins, already recognised with a best actress award at Berlin this year. She takes a character who is initially tiresome and makes her, against the odds in these cynical times, lovable. "You can't make everyone happy," an exasperated Zoe advises Leigh's little sunbeam. "Yeah, but there's no harm in trying," Poppy beams back. No harm indeed with an actress this gifted. Leigh didn't just get lucky in casting Hawkins: he struck gold.

A new film from Mike Leigh shines out like a good dead in a wicked world – especially in light of some of the tripe that’s been served up in the past few weeks.

It’s hard to believe that it is four years since Vera Drake but given Leigh’s singular working practices he’s hardly likely to turn out a film a year. But, a Mike Leigh film is always worth waiting for, and this one is up there with the best of them.

Famously, when Jerry Seinfeld began his TV show, he described it as a show about nothing. That it ran for something like ten years and became one of the most successful programmes in TV history suggests that it was about something after all, and something that people could engage with.

Happy-Go-Lucky is cut from the same cloth in that it appears to be about nothing but in fact contains some profound and occasionally uncomfortable truths about the lives we lead and the world we live in.

Leigh’s film is a slice of contemporary London life. It’s about Poppy, a relentlessly cheerful, endlessly optimistic, 30-year-old primary school teacher whose abiding philosophy is that it’s nice to be nice.

In the course of the film Poppy attempts to learn to drive, takes flamenco lessons, confides in her flatmate cum soulmate Zoe, deals with a troubled student, and attempts to pour oil on troubled family waters.

In dramatic terms not much happens, and yet all human life is here. Leigh’s film is utterly absorbing; with not much happening on screen the first time I glanced at my watch, the film had been on for more than an hour.

Much of this is down to the rigour with which Leigh and his cast create the world they inhabit. The film is completely and totally credible, but much more is down to the performance of the wonderful Sally Hawkins as Poppy.

Hawkins made an impression in a small role in Vera Drake, but given the opportunity to shine, she gives one of the performances of the year. It’s perfectly shaded: Poppy is cheerful without ever being manic, but there is also the sense of a young woman determined to meet the world head on and make the best of it.

I know we have only just got this year’s BAFTA awards out of the way, but if Hawkins doesn’t figure prominently next year I will be very surprised. As always, with Leigh’s eye for detail the rest of the film is impeccably cast, without a single false note.

The one depressing thing about Happy-Go-Lucky is what it says about men. It would be wrong to describe this as a feminist film but there’s no doubt that with one slight exception the men in this film are a pretty useless lot.

Thank Heavens for people like Poppy to sort us out and keep us going.