High Hopes

Philip Davis - Cyril Bender
Ruth Sheen - Shirley
Edna Doré - Mrs. Bender
Philip Jackson - Martin Burke
Heather Tobias - Valerie Burke

High Hopes is great British miserablist Mike Leigh’s comment on class and social change in late-80s London. The dour wit and sharp dialogue is there, in a story about a bolshie socialist motorbike courier named Cyril (Philip Davis), and his broody girlfriend Shirley (Ruth Sheen), who are looking after his mother as she slips into senility, and dealing with the aforementioned upper classes as they invade their patch.

The movie begins with the arrival in London of a hapless young man named Wayne (Jason Watkins), who leaves the tube station in search of his sister's apartment. Lost and looking for directions, Wayne meets Cyril and asks for his help; Cyril is unable to make sense of the information given to him, so invites Wayne home to consult a street map. Cyril and Shirley live in small flat, supported by Cyril's earnings as a motorcycle courier. The couple are amused by Wayne's inexperience and naivety of London, but they do genuinely try to help him out. The following morning, Wayne leaves the flat in search of his sister's place as Cyril and Shirley wave goodbye.

Later, Cyril and Valerie's pay a visit to Cyril’s mum, a bitter old woman named Mrs. Bender (Edna Dore), living in solitude in the last semi-detached flat on her street not yet gentrified. Her next-door neighbours are the pompous Boothe-Braines, two status driven yuppies, Rupert (David Bamber) and Laetitia (Leslie Manville), a pair of upper-class twits who like to forget their converted row house was recently a public council house. Cyril's hysterical sister Valerie (Heather Tobias) is materialistic and middle-class, married to philandering husband, Martin (Philip Jackson), who sells used cars. In attempting to parody the thick-skinned detachment of the upper classes and the naff excesses of the aspirational lower-middle classes, Leigh relies on stereotypes and unbelievable situations, like Sloane rangers living in Kings Cross - as yet not a real phenomenon.