There’s nothing like a successful promotion is there? Last Thursday’s Evening Standard had a free cinema token in it that gave readers a free ticket to any screening this evening at any Odeon cinema. I dutifully felt I had to take up the offer. I perused their website and chose Talk to Her, the most recent Pedro Almodovar film which I know is supposed to be superb. Well let’s just say that I wasn’t exactly on my own when I turned up at the cramped Wardour Street cinema, where you have to get a lift to the third floor to even buy a ticket. It was sold out and crowds of people were queuing backwards and forwards to get in to another film.
I beat a hasty retreat and thought I’d try the altogether bigger Covent Garden Odeon (not that close to Covent Garden incidentally). There was another big queue and Rabbit Proof Fence was already sold out and Donnie Darko was doing good business, but I plumped for the always reliable Mike Leigh film All or Nothing. A couple of weeks ago, I was going into Picadilley Circus tube station when I saw Mike Leigh riding the escalator up. Later that evening when I got in, I switched on the local news, and there he was at his own opening. Good on him taking the tube to a film premiere!
But back to the film in which Timothy Spall plays a minicab driver whose bleak life with his family is the main focus, with his wife who cycles to the supermarket, overweight daughter who works in an old people’s home, and obese son who does, well, nothing at all. Then there are their friends and neighbours, and not so friendly other halves. The film draws out the back stories slowly and carefully, and the lives seem real. Yet there’s humour throughout, and it’s superbly acted. Would I have gone to see this without a free ticket? Probably not to be honest, but I’d have missed out. Yet I don’t know why, since you’re never short changed by Mike Leigh.