Another Year

I think Mike Leigh, as he ages, is exploring notions of happiness, and this film does it better than Happy Go Lucky. There is plenty of misery in this movie but the central characters are a happily married functional couple played by Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen. The film traces a year in their lives, each season marked by a dinner party that includes one or another, or several, of their unhappy friends. The acting is lived-in and remarkable, the structure almost classical, and the end-result is just about perfect.