The ties that bind

If you knew what was going to happen to you in the morning, you'd never get out of bed," declares Phil (Timothy Spall) early in Mike Leigh's All or Nothing. Phil, a cabbie, does have a hard time rousing himself in the morning, so his workday is truncated. And he's always behind financially; he has to borrow money from Penny (Lesley Manville), his common-law wife, and even from his unemployed son Rory (James Corden).

All or Nothing focuses on the residents of a remarkably ugly London council flat. They're people whose lives have stalled, who have in various ways reached a spiritual dead end. Leigh depicts both their desperation and their clumsy, touching efforts to lift themselves and each other out of the morass.

Penny and Phil's relationship has come down to whining and sniping on her part and passivity on his, and she can't communicate with Rory, who goes into a rage at every demand, every appeal. Their daughter Rachel (Alison Garland), a kind, quiet soul, does scut work at an old folks home; overweight like her father and brother, with a premature middle-aged look, she has no romantic prospects except for a much older co-worker whose notion of courtship is to describe his own solitary existence and confide that he sleeps naked.