Sweet Sue
The son of Mike Leigh makes his directorial debut in the style of his father, albeit with disappointing results.
Sweet Sue marks a big step forward in the career of Leo Leigh, since he both wrote and directed it and this is his first fully-fledged feature with actors. The film is hardly likely to go unnoticed here due to the fact that Leo, who was born in 1981, is the son of Mike Leigh and Alison Steadman. That his parents are so admired will in itself draw attention to this offering but the tone and the material of Sweet Sue so strongly echo the films of Mike Leigh that comparisons are bound to be drawn. Unfortunately, that immediately underlines the shortcomings of Leo Leigh especially in his ability as a screenwriter.
Aside from a sequence that takes place in Hastings, Sweet Sue is set in East London and the focus is very much on three central characters. The titular figure is a middle-aged woman played by Maggie O'Neill: when we first see Sue she is sitting alone in a restaurant where she receives a phone call from her date cancelling not just dinner but their relationship. Then following the death of her younger brother, she meets a biker named Ron (Tony Pitts) who is attending the funeral and starts to flirt with him, after which a relationship develops between them. The third main character is Anthony (Harry Trevaldwyn) who is Ron’s son by his ex-wife and he is somebody whose tone could not be more camp. The interaction between these three from a working-class background is at the heart of Sweet Sue which plays as a character-based tragi-comedy.
Right down to the fact that much of the dialogue was improvised by the actors, this film is strikingly close in tone to works created by Mike Leigh in the past. Indeed, Sue is very much the kind of figure that Alison Steadman herself might have played and, if such echoes are apparent in Maggie O'Neill's performance, that is entirely apt. Similarly, Ron with his biker’s gear making a sharp contrast with his interest in books about foreign countries and about ancient pagan Britain would readily fit into one of dad’s films. The one figure who brings a more contemporary note to the piece is Anthony since this narcissistic dancer is a vlogger on YouTube who promotes himself in his videos and proceeds to tell his followers exactly what he thinks about the new woman in his father's life.
While the set-up here is not without promise, it needs three well-realised elements to carry it to success. The first is a flow to the storytelling to compensate for a narrative that only develops gradually. Here we find Leo Leigh offering early on a series of short scenes that break off before they really build and which are sometimes poorly placed. For example, our introduction to Anthony comes in a scene with his sugar daddy (Jeff Rawle) which is inserted without any explanation as to who he is. Similarly, the funeral of Sue's brother is startlingly abrupt because although it has been established that he is ill the seriousness of his condition has not been conveyed. Then we have Sue’s flirtatious encounter with Ron, a sex scene and shots showing them living together, but this is done without any real sense of how much time is passing.
The second requisite for success is to have comic lines and telling details that make the humour effective. There are some. Early on we find that Sue has a business providing party supplies, decorations and balloons and it is perfect that its name should be ‘Sue's Party Palace’. Much later there's a good joke about Barry Manilow but, despite the better touches, much of the dialogue strives hard in this style and is passable rather than becoming delightful.
The third feature is to have characters realised with sufficient depth and conviction for the audience to feel for them even if they are capable of behaving badly. If that is not achieved the sadness in the tale cannot truly make its mark. All of the players in Sweet Sue do their best with what they have and Harry Trevaldwyn never holds back in his portrayal of Anthony. But, if I ask myself whether or not we really care about what happens to these characters, the answer is that we do not. This negative response is the stronger because, if the first half of the film has been all bits and pieces, the various conflicts in the second half come to seem contrived and unconvincing both in the way that they emerge and in how they are to some extent resolved. In particular the relationship between Anthony and Sue keeps shifting so drastically that it is unpersuasive. All of this makes for a film that falls short of its aims and the oddity of the experience is further emphasised by the music score by Eska with its eccentric deployment of a saw and its frequent incorporation of whistling.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Maggie O’Neill, Tony Pitts, Harry Trevaldwyn, Jeff Rawle, Nick Holder, Anna Calder-Marshall, Hannah Walters, Emma Swan, Anna Francolini, Johann Myers, Paul Hilton, James Dryden.
Dir Leo Leigh, Pro Scott O’Donnell, Andy Brunskill and Tim Nash, Screenplay Leo Leigh, Ph Simona Susnea, Pro Des Lucie Red, Ed Paco Sweetman, Music Eska, Costumes Verity May Lane.
Sums Film and Media/BBC Films/Somesuch/HanWay Films-Curzon Film Distributors.
99 mins. UK. 2022. UK Rel: 22 December 2023. Cert. 15.
