 |
Learning
Difficulties Major 
>
|
|
|
TITLE |
Bleak Moments (1971) |
|
ALT__TITLE |
Loving
Moments |
|
DISABILITY |
Learning
Difficulty |
|
NOTES |
As bleak as
the title suggests, and the alternative title must be ironic.
Leigh's films usually involve some improvisation. |
|
They portray
accurately, and without any gloss, scenes of |
|
family life.
But there is humour. His television plays "Abigail's |
|
Party" and
"Nuts in May" are hilarious. Bleak Moments is his |
|
first film
for the cinema and recently he won the Palm d'Or at |
|
In this film
a woman is looking after her sister who has |
|
learning
difficulties. At the same time she is trying to arouse |
|
the interest
of a shy teacher. |
|
In this film
almost everyone is a loser lacking social skills. |
|
The sister
who is the carer drinks wine clearly to calm her |
|
nerves.
Everyone tends to speak and act (hesitantly) in the |
|
same
fashion. The sister with learning difficulties (29 years |
|
old) goes to
a workshop where they make 'simple' things. |
|
There's a
hippie living in the garage is yet another slow |
|
speaking
loser with his nerves in a twist. |
|
The pace is
painfully slow with nearly everyone talking in |
|
whispers.
And it is hard to imagine the sister's boyfriend as a |
|
teacher. In
fact impossible, he'd run out of the class during |
|
his first
teaching practice. There is a scene in the school but |
|
only in the
staffroom where he is lectured to by another |
|
There aren't
bleak moments the film is bleak throughout. |
|
You might
laugh at the absurdity of some of the characters |
|
but the tone
hardly changes. One dreads that this might be |
|
the first
film of Leigh's a person sees because it would |
|
probably be
the last. This isn't real life as it seems to pretend |
|
to be.
Events in life and people are a disparate jumble. Like |
|
may attract
like but they still live in a world of unlike and here |
|
everything
is a sameness. Contrast this film with Abigail's |
|
Notes
|
|
