Topsy Turvy

Mike Leigh’s TOPSY TURVY is one of my all-time favorite relaxation movies.

The film is a perfect mix of charming and melancholic, much like the rest of Leigh’s filmography. Only now instead of depicting the complicated lives of everyday Britons, he presents a pleasant procedural of Gilbert & Sullivan developing and staging The Mikado, one of their most famous operas. If that isn’t enticing enough, every performance is perfect, every scene is perfect, and every detail is perfect.

All this perfection exposes us to the pain and beauty in such a level of presentation, occasionally reminding the audience that everyone’s corset is a little too tight and their emotions are a little too repressed.