Some described Mike Leigh’s latest film, Another Year, as a happily married couple , Tom and Gerri (Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen) surrounded by sad people.

That pretty much sums up the film. Set over a period of three seasons, we meet the variety of characters that are a part of Tom and Gerri’s life. One of them is Mary (Lesley Manville) who is a co-worker of Gerri, who is a counselor at a medical clinic in London. Mary is in her 50s yet dresses like someone in her twenties and a definite cougar as she tries to pursue Tom and Gerri’s son, Joe (Oliver Maltman), which causes a riff in her friendship with Gerri. Another one is Tom, friend Ken (Peter Wight) an overweight man who drinks, eats and smokes constantly to comedic effect. Also, his attraction to Mary, who rebuffs his advances, are played for laughs.

We also meet Tom’s brother Ron (David Bradley) who is in mourning after the sudden passing of his wife and has a very strained relationship with his son Carl (Martin Savage).

We also get scenes through each season of Tom and Gerri working lovingly from their allotment and actually the food scenes in the film were great and made me really hungry.

We get a cameo from Imelda Staunton as a patient of Gerri and her two brief scenes you worry about her character and her fate.

One of the things that I didn’t quite understand was introducing Joe’s profession as what I can assume is an immigration lawyer and not bring it up again. I thought that scene would be important later on in the film but it wasn’t. Also, I think Leigh did a bait and switch with us as I thought that Joe was estranged from his parents but in fact has quite the loving and close familial bond.

However, the winning element of Another Year are the performances. Manville is great as Mary she balances the cringe-worthiness of her character as at times she suffers from verbal diarrhea to feeling for her as she just silently sits at the dinner table looking downcast as happy casual conversation of holidays surround her.

Broadbent and Sheen are great as Tom and Gerri. They never ever let how other people’s emotions, whether sad or angry get to them and in return treat all those around them with respect to their feelings and situation. It is not that their are nauseating optimistic like Sally Hawkins’ character in Leigh’s last film, Happy-Go-Lucky, there was just something so adult about that.

Another Year is playing at the 29th Annual Vancouver International Film Festival. It is showing October 13th at 3:45pm at the Visa Screening Room. For more information, go here.