THE CINEMA OF MIKE LEIGH
A Sense of the Real
Garry Watson

contents

Acknowledgements
Preface

Part One: Establishing a New Context
1 The Reception of Leigh’s Work: Revising Our Expectations
2 The Extraordinary Element of Too-Muchness at the Heart of the Ordinary
3 In Pursuit of the Real

Part Two: The Films (I)
4 The Feminist Leigh: Two Women ‘on the other side of silence’
5 Leigh and Lawrence on ‘the middle-class thing’ and What it Leaves Out
6 The Political and the Flaubertian Leigh: On Stupidity, Taste, Anger and Resistance
7 Comedies Celebrating Marriage, the Family and the Pursuit of Happiness

Part Three: The Films (II)
8 ‘Are you with me?’: Leigh’s ‘Traumatising Seducer’
9 In Search of the Missing Mother/Daughter
10 A Meta-commentary on Leigh’s Art and an Exploration of
Female Friendship
11 Work as Play: The Utopian Element
12 ‘In the messianic light’
13 Conclusion: A Sense of the Real

Notes
Bibliography
Index