One of the key works in the reemergent New British Cinema of the late 1980s, High Hopes effectively relaunched the filmmaking career of English independent filmmaker Mike Leigh (director of last year’s critically acclaimed Topsy Turvy), who had spent the better part of the previous decade working in tele-vision. With an improvisational air and a decidedly episodic structure, High Hopes presents a ground-level romp through Thatcher’s Britain as witnessed by the residents of a King’s Cross neighborhood in the throws of gentrification. Central to the shifting stories are Cyril, a motorcycle messenger, and his longtime companion Shirley—leftists in their mid-thirties whose qualms about the world around them have kept them from starting a family.