Everyday

This is the film I preferred of those that I saw in the film festival in Dinard. It was introduced by its director, Michael Winterbottom, looking alarmingly young for a man who has directed 37 films. The film was made over a period of five years and it is about a family with four children. It shows in detail the day-to-day routine of the family's life, particularly as the children are got up, given breakfast and got off to school in the morning and collected in the afternoon. There are several scenes shot in the school showing the children during their classes. There are amazingly touching scenes of the children, who are real-life siblings and are too young to 'act', but are caught by Winterbottom in authentic moments of emotion and vulnerability.

The anomaly is that the father, Ian, is in prison so, very often, the children must be rounded up by their mother, Karen, put on a bus, then on a train, then into a taxi, to take them to visit their father in prison.

This film has not had a cinema release yet in the UK, although it has been shown on television. In Googling for reviews I did not find many, and some of those that I did find expressed disappointment that the film is boring because nothing happens. This is true, nothing happens, except Life. Those who make this complaint are those who have overdosed on Hollywood entertainment taken neat.

I very much admired recently the films of Asghar Farhadi, About Elly and A Separation. One thing I admired about these films was how, from very simple beginnings, the plot thickened, and how simple situations led to unexpected sequences. Everyday is the opposite. Little situations that may have made us tense because they may have led to trouble, didn't. This is just the same as how, usually, when one maybe forgot to lock the front door, one returns home to find that a no burglar has been in. These little anxieties occur but usually they are okay, and that is how it is in this film. The film is set in rural Norfolk and when one of the children, aged about seven, takes a hunting rifle and goes off into the woods looking for rabbits, nothing goes wrong and he is finally found by by his mother, given a smack, and sent to bed. I admired this film because it does not have acting shtick and it does not have dramatic shtick, which was so refreshing after so many films I have seen err in the other direction.
 
I course the mother does not need any more drama then she already has, with four children, an absent father, just a little occasional help from her mother in law, a job in B&Q during the day and a job serving in a pub in the evening. She is played very well by Shirley Henderson and her husband is played very charmingly by John Simm. The scenes of prison visits were shot in real prisons and the scenes in the classroom was shot in a real school.

The film is intercut with occasional scenes of the rural environment - fields, rolling hils, sheep and woods. The soundtrack has lovely music by Michael Nyman.

There are some scenes of family outings - trips to the seaside - showing that another man has seeped into her life, although we see no details other than that he occasionally joins them on outings and has tea with them. When, towards the end of the film, Ian is out of prison, there is a scene where they are in bed, him asleep and her, eyes wide, staring at the ceiling, and suddenly her eyes fill with tears and she says "You know, it was really hard, while you were away." He half wakes up

    "what...?"
    "I was seeing someone."
    "You were seeing someone while I was inside??"
    "Yes."
    "Who was it, who were you seeing??"
    "Eddy"
    "I don't believe it. You were seeing fuckin' Eddy??

So it goes on. There are shots of the children in their rooms hearing their parents' raised voices.The next morning Ian is at the breakfast table not looking as though he had a particularly good night but over it.

I think that with this film Michael Winterbottom has made a quiet masterpiece.