The film revolves around the life of Bobby, the cheerful and colorful North London School teacher. It seems that this teacher is still optimistic about inciting anger around her everywhere.
Few actors could have pulled off this role successfully, as it requires great energy, charisma and depth to make Poppy credible and so much more than first impressions.
Stop Smiling
June 14, 2016
Once we relax enough to be carried along with the overlapping waves of jokes and remarks, the occasional quip pierces through the tornado of words and strikes a funny bone, sometimes before we realize why we are laughing.
The intentions of this oddity are muddled, but the small portraits of ordinary people choosing their path through the daily range of depression and delight are fully alive.
Sally Hawkins, in a blinding, Oscar-worthy piece of acting so good you barely see it, plays Poppy, a perpetually upbeat elementary schoolteacher in London.
If you leave the theater feeling uplifted (and unless your heart is made of cold gray concrete, you will), it wasn't due to manipulation, but a result of the film having honestly earned it.
Hawkins wears her grin in almost every scene, but she gives us hints that this dizzy 30-year-old is deep, as are the disappointments that might have caused Poppy to don this mask. It's a performance of sustained, childlike wonder and adult wit.
