Another Year (Mike Leigh, 2010)

A comfortable middle-class couple heading towards retirement are burdened with single friends and family whose lives are less happy. Of these, the nervous wreck Mary takes centre stage, a relentlessly needy and alcoholic victim, self-unaware to such an extent in her flailing that she becomes a nightmare dinner guest on the scale of the tyrannical Abigail in Leigh's best-known TV play. That she avoids becoming a similar caricature at the same time owes much to a complex portrayal by Lesley Manville, though it should be noted that none of the other characters are mere archetypes either, with the otherwise saintly hosting couple not free of an unhelpful tendency to sweep any awkward issues under the carpet. All in all, it's a mature piece on the undramatic difficulties of real life, and as such ranks amongst Leigh's best work.

7/10