All or Nothing (film)

All or Nothing
British DVD cover
Directed by Mike Leigh
Produced by Simon Channing Williams
Written by Mike Leigh
Starring Timothy Spall
Lesley Manville
Music by Andrew Dickson
Edited by Lesley Walker
Production
company
Distributed by UGC Films
Release date
  • 17 May 2002 (2002-05-17) (Cannes)
  • 18 October 2002 (2002-10-18)
Running time
 128 minutes
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Budget $9 million
Box office $2.8 million[1]

All or Nothing is a 2002 British drama film written and directed by Mike Leigh. Like much of Leigh's work, the film is set in present-day London, and depicts three working-class families and their everyday lives.

Plot summary

The film begins with a day nearing end. Rachel, the daughter in the first family, is shown working in a nursing home. Phil, her father, is shown driving people around in his minicab. Penny, Rachel's mother, is shown working as a cashier at Safeway store alongside Maureen, the mother in the second family. When Penny leaves work, she cycles home to find her 18-year-old son Rory in a fight with a local boy for taking his football.

Rory is a lazy, obese, ill-mannered teenager who neither goes to school nor has a job. Complications with his obesity arise when after an altercation with a gang of youths playing "Piggy in the Middle", he runs out of breath, begins to hyperventilate and is hospitalised after suffering a heart attack. This

The second family consists of Maureen, another cashier at Safeway, and her daughter Donna, a waitress at a cafe. Donna becomes pregnant by her boyfriend, Jason, despite being on the pill, and this leads to a heated argument among the three characters.

The third family consists of Ron, who also drives a minicab, his unemployed teenage daughter Samantha, and his wife Carol, an unemployed alcoholic. Samantha shows interest in both Jason and Craig, a taciturn young man who seems to stalk her.

Cast

Film locations

Dungeness in Kent was used as a film location for the scene where Phil visits the coast to contemplate his problems.[2]

Reception

It was well received by critics and audiences alike, receiving an 83% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 89 reviews, with an average rating of 7.1/10. The critical consensus states that "All or Nothing's depiction of the working-class can be depressingly bleak, but the performances are wonderfully true to life." The film holds an average B+ grade on Yahoo! Movies.

Awards

The film won the London Film Critics Circle Award for Best British Film of the Year, and Mike Leigh was nominated for Best Director at the European Film Awards. The film was also nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival.[3]

References

  1. ↑ "All or Nothing (2002) - Box Office Mojo". www.boxofficemojo.com.
  2. ↑ Kent Film Office. "Kent Film Office All or Nothing Article".
  3. ↑ "Festival de Cannes: All or Nothing". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved 2009-10-24.
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