Another Year

Another Year (2010) is a British drama directed by Mike Leigh — watch online on iFILM. Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen play Tom and Gerri, a contented couple approaching retirement, whose garden and dinner table draw in the people around them across four seasons.

The structure is literal: spring, summer, autumn, winter. Tom and Gerri are fine. What Leigh is interested in is everyone else — Mary, their colleague, who shows up repeatedly with wine and a life that won't settle; Ken, Tom's old friend with nowhere better to be; Gerri's son Joe and the unexpected new girlfriend. No one is villainised and no one is saved. The film just watches.

Lesley Manville's performance as Mary earned a BAFTA nomination, and it's the kind of acting that makes a quietly devastating scene out of a woman asking for a second glass. Leigh made the film at the height of his powers — spare, undemonstrative, and more affecting than it appears. Stream Another Year (2010) online on iFILM.