04/07/2023 - Leo Leigh’s feature debut is a darkly comic character study not unlike his father’s work, following an ageing singleton through the bleak modern dating scene

Move over Brandon Cronenberg and Jim Loach – now meet Leo Leigh. In the competitive arena of feature filmmaking, not concealing your line of descent has its advantages, however unsporting it feels – what Mike Leigh fan wouldn’t be curious to see if his offspring also has the same magic or mojo? Last week at Filmfest München, in its CineVision competition, audiences had the chance to do just that. Now the goal for Leigh and other “nepo babies” (to cruelly put it) is to make work strong enough that questions of lineage become irrelevant, with the precedent in mind of the great, recently deceased British novelist Martin Amis, whose dad was Kingsley.

Especially with Leigh senior largely pivoting to period films in recent years, Sweet Sue satisfies as a comfy throwback to his early, vinegary character studies, here updated by Leigh fils with telling details about social-media use and self-promotion in contemporary times, whilst also inadvertently signalling how this more caricatured form of British social realism has fallen from vogue. A cousin of the perennially upbeat Poppy (played by Sally Hawkins) from Happy-Go-Lucky [+see also:
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film profile], Sue (Maggie O’Neill) tirelessly keeps up her tatty costume shop on an East London high street, her occasional party-supply gigs at venues like church halls and community centres an opportunity to go to town on the champagne flutes, paper plates of refreshments and, occasionally, the late-middle-aged male eye candy. Whilst her reactions and mannerisms are heightened for comic effect, Leigh nails a convincing tone and world for her to exist in, with her fading pink hair highlights always enticing the eye in his long, master-shot compositions.

At her brother Pete’s (Paul Hilton) funeral, the slender plot events are set in motion by Sue’s eyeing up of Ron (Tony Pitts), a motorbike enthusiast endearingly dressed like a Hell’s Angel. Sore from her mother’s (Anna Calder-Marshall) abiding favouritism of Pete, she makes a rebellious gesture at the pub wake, running off from the event with Ron like a besotted teenager. But Sue soon finds his Harley-Davidson-lovin’ exterior conceals a conflicted soul, with the bike obsession compensating for sexual impotence – in keeping with the commonly heard accusation – and his strong bookish bent and personal exploration of gender fluidity coming to the fore.

A distinct flaw of the film is Ron’s son Anthony (Harry Trevaldwyn) surfacing as the most fully realised character. A gay, aspiring and heavily insecure social-media influencer, his gradual immersion in Sue’s life provides the most dramatic tension and also poignancy, as a new, patchwork family structure is temporarily built, and then recedes, but gladly with a “cringe comedy” set piece at a dance performance as the trigger, rather than a traditional, climactic shouting match.

Rather than observing Sue from many angles, allowing every facet of her personality to dominate and surface, Leigh’s script (developed through improvisation, akin to his father’s famous method) reductively but virtuously grants her one key personality trait: a natural ease and adaptability in various unstable social situations, and a related capacity for forgiveness. Like in Leigh père’s best work, it’s a pleasure and fascination to spend time, perched on a pub stool or sprawled inebriated on a grubby sofa, with these fully embodied characters, a good omen for Leo enjoying a strong future career.

Sweet Sue is a UK production, staged by SUMS Film and Media, BBC Films and Somesuch. HanWay Films manages its international sales.