Released in 1971, Bleak Moments is the feature directorial debut of Mike Leigh, who up until that point had worked primarily in theatre and television, primarily for the BBC in the case of the latter. Anyone familiar with Leigh television work will find recognisable material here, but in bringing his unique style of writing and directing to the big screen, Bleak Moments heralded the start of a long and productive career in cinema.
Shot on a low budget and with a largely unknown (certainly at the time) cast, Bleak Moments is a typically low-key character piece that explores a particular type of suburban hell. Leigh has a largely inaccurate reputation in some quarters for directing Ken Loach-style films about social issues, and whilst this is occasionally not entirely untrue, he really just writes and directs films about people, and does so with warmth and a great deal of humour. The film stars Anne Raitt stars as Sylvia, who lives at home with her sister Hilda - who has special care needs - and the loose plot follows her life both at home and at work. Her world is peopled by quietly eccentric characters (a hallmark of many of Leigh's films), and virtually every single one in the film is socially awkward and struggles to relate to other people. The result is excruciatingly funny, as the various cast members convincingly convey embarrassment, reticence and generalised discomfiture.
Thus, we have Sylvia's boyfriend Peter, played by Eric Allan, who is profoundly uptight and mind-numbingly boring. He's incapable of small talk, as a scene in which he's left to chat with Mike Bradwell's affably twitchy stoner Norman reveals, and his date with Sylvia in a Chinese restaurant is painful to watch, as he's cajoled into using numbers when asking for food. In what is arguably the film's most memorable moment, Sylvia offers to have sex with him back at her home, and he gets flustered to the point of paralysis, with Allan managing the impressive acting feat of making his ears go red, in what is surely one of the most embarrassing to watch scenes ever filmed. Sylvia smiles sadly and slightly wistfully as Peter makes excuses and leaves, effectively ending their dead-end relationship and symbolising the fact that in a film almost entirely filled with oddballs, she is the only normal person amongst them, quietly accepting of their quirks.
The entire cast impresses, with Sarah Stephenson proving extremely convincing as Hilda and Joolia Cappleman channelling neuroses as Sylvia's friend Pat. Pat's mother is played by Liz Smith, the most recognisable face in the film and someone who is perfectly cast in the role of a woman who spends all of her time sat in bed, passively-aggressively expecting to be waited on by her daughter. Leigh is famous for his collaborative scriptwriting process, based on lengthy periods of improvisation with the cast, a technique he honed in the theatre and the studios of the BBC, and which he exploits to memorable effect here. But there is more to Leigh's direction than his relationship with the cast, a fact often overlooked: Bleak Moments shows off all of his directing trademarks, from a preference to shooting entirely on location, through the use of lingering close-ups that focus on the actors, to an often amusing attention to trivial details, such as when we repeatedly see a random stranger eating in the Chinese restaurant. A pair of static long-shots introduces the suburban setting and there is an abundance of high-angle shots, framing characters with their surroundings.
The film opens with a simple, atonal piano theme tune that perfectly suits the dysfunctional mood of the film, and which brings it full circle as a somewhat dejected Sylvia hammers it out at the end. Otherwise, there's an absence of incidental music, just diegetic music when Norman plays his guitar and sings; perhaps this was a decision driven by budgetary restrictions, but it benefits the film greatly. Bleak Moments is not Leigh's best known film; indeed, it has largely been obscured by his later work. But it deserves to be remembered: it's sweet, funny and perceptive, and in its celebration of the quirkiness of ordinary people, it isn't really bleak at all.
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