HAPPY-GO-LUCKY/HIP HIP HURRAH!!!

How do you explain a man like Mike Leigh? Utterly unassuming and affable yet capable of churning out unusual films that are a cause for both joy and awards, like his latest, Happy-Go-Lucky, starring Sally Hawkins (above).

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Just when the credit crunch is threatening to squeeze the juice of the merriest of men, along come Leigh and Hawkins - who deservedly collected the Berlin Best Actress Award for her role in February - with a story about a girl who loves life despite lacking any of the usual modern prerequisites for happiness such as a Rolex, a Caribbean villa or even a subprime mortgage.

Instead, she simply lives in rented digs with her best friend and loves life! When did anyone last dare to make a film as radical as that? Who but Mike Leigh would even contemplate such a thing, let alone manage to pull it off with such panache.

There is a school of thought that films, to succeed, must be outrageous or violent or exploitive or sexy or all of these things.

Happy-Go-Lucky proves otherwise. It has nothing cheap or obvious to make it appealing. It is just a simple story of a simple girl living a simple life. A north London primary school teacher doing ordinary things. From teaching her ordinary kids and taking a dance class to hanging out with friends in the pub and learning to drive.

But, oh goodness, the relish with which she does the most banal of tasks, the indefatigable good humour with which she confronts the bored and miserable folk she meets on her rounds.

It is as if she has wandered onto the set of East Enders, where the denizens throw at her every possible whinge they can think of to distress her and, instead feeeling down, she merely tweaks their noses and says, "Oh, you are a funny one!" and sails on laughing, leaving them both baffled and amused.

"You looking for a bit of bovver?" they scream. "Oh, go on then, give it to me," she replies gleefully, deflating their ire.

This is the sunny Juno without any pregnancy to distract her. Or, more precisely, the always cheerful Vera "I’ll just put the kettle on" Drake without the abortion dramas.

It would be stretching reality too far for Leigh to suggest that just being happy is enough to ensure a safe passage through life and Hawkins, bearing the sparklingly appropriate name Poppy, does meet her match in the form of her driving instructor, a marvellously malcontent Eddie Marsan (above).

Lonely and tormented, he taunts her, he stalks her and he nearly he kills her with his bad driving. So she knows that there are thorns in about everyday, regardless of how charmed an existence she lives most of the time.

But even Marsan’s menace can’t tarnish her extraordinary good humour for more than a few minutes.

Once his car is out of sight, he is out of her mind and she can get on with what she does best: savouring every minute of every day for the goodness in it, never worrying for moment about what she lacks.

It is a fabulous attitude to have at any time but seems especially welcome in a world too easily stressed by worries from a credit crisis to global warming worries.

Happy-Go-Lucky opens nationwide on Friday, April 18, 2008.

Posted Monday, April 7, 2008.