Writer and Director Leo Leigh’s debut fiction feature, Sweet Sue, is a bleakly comic story about lives imperfectly lived, complicated relationships and, at times, abject misery, lifted from lasting gloom by lashings of absurdity, dark humour, and strong central performances.

In the film’s opening scenes its titular character (Maggie O’Neill) looks after her party supplies shop, ignoring her Elvis mannequin’s broken nose and staring blankly through joyful customers. Her unwell mother prefers the company of Sue’s brother, who himself is bedridden with an unspecified illness, and her partner, now ex, stands her up. She perseveres, seeking comfort within her difficult surroundings, and finding it in bearded biker, Ron (Tony Pitts).

Their eyes meet (after Sue convinces him to remove his cartoonish sunglasses) during her brother’s wake, and they begin a relationship that might just puncture the degradation and despair. Sue shrugs off Ron’s erectile dysfunction (“don’t worry about it. Do you want some ice cream?”) and they both laugh at his friend, Gordon (the brilliant Nick Holder), as he recounts his strange reaction to a personal tragedy.

Then, just as world-weariness threatens to overcome them, enters Ron’s son, Anthony (Harry Trevaldwyn), the vibrant, scene-stealing counterpoint to all that went before. Already an influencer and the leader of his ambitious dance troupe, Electric Destiny, Anthony also excels in mystifying Sue and making his father increasingly uncomfortable. He injects a different energy into the film, bringing his Midnight Musings vlogs, eccentric dance routines, and frustrated sugar daddy, Terry (Jeff Rawle), with him, and its his presence that pulls the film through its most dramatic moments, and towards a conclusion.

A strange, understated strength runs through the ending, tied together by the stoical Sue. As the world around her decays, she walks forward, watching as it longs to live on. After all, there’s still plenty of laughs to be had.

Thomas Hutchinson