Please don’t be too surprised if you look out of the window and see Mike Leigh in a new Ferrari and a loud Hawaiian shirt. He is clearly having a midlife crisis. In Happy-Go-Lucky he has devised a delightful comedy that sinks its teeth into your heart with unexpected power.

As ever with Leigh the pleasures are elusive. The beginning is as scatty as the heroine. Sally Hawkins is an irritatingly cheerful London hippy who could find a double bedspread of silver lining in a Force Ten storm. After ten minutes with this dippy girl and her friends I wanted to walk out. Half an hour later I was gummed up with emotion. The guile is a subtle marvel. Hawkins starts to break down your instant resistance to her hiccupy giggles and kneejerk aphorisms when small cracks of vulnerability reveal the almost heroic (and I hate the next word) niceness of her character, Poppy. By the end you want to take this 30-year-old schoolteacher home and wrap her in cotton wool.

15, 118mins

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