Meet the director who continues to amaze

Mike Leigh is going for a remarkable treble at the Berlin Film Festival, which opened yesterday. The director is vying to join the exalted list of film-makers who have directed a winner of each of the three major festival prizes, the Palme d'Or of Cannes, the Golden Lion of Venice and Berlin's Golden Bear.

At present, only three directors can claim that honour – Henri-Georges Cluzot, Michelangelo Antonioni and Robert Altman. And Cluzot won the Cannes award in the days before a jury decided it, while Altman has only a share of the spoils from Venice as his 1993 effort Short Cuts shared the prize with Krzsztof Kieslowski's Trois Couleurs: Bleu. If Leigh wins, he will be the only man alive able to claim this particular triple crown; Secrets & Lies won the top award in Cannes in 1996, and Vera Drake won Venice in 2004.

Even more remarkable is the fact that his new film, Happy-Go-Lucky, is only the ninth feature film that Leigh has made for cinema. Given that, it seems ironic that Leigh used to complain that his films didn't win awards. A more salient complaint might be that, given his award-winning pedigree and international importance as a director, he is not more revered in Britain. It's surprising that even after the success of Leigh's last film Vera Drake, Ken Loach is still the first name to trip off the tongues of film students when talking of directors working in Britain today, and Leigh is usually some way down what is a very short list. If Leigh is going to win a place in the hearts and minds of British audiences, this is surely the year that it will finally happen.

In addition to the release of Happy-Go-Lucky, many of his early works made for television will be available for the first time on DVD. And, in a forthcoming book of interviews, the director talks candidly about his unusual working methods and the battles he has faced making films in his unique style.

Leigh never bothers with such details as a screenplay, and famously insists that his actors sign up for one of his projects for a block period of time, often six months or more, with no idea who they are going to play, the plot of the film, or how many days they will be required to work in that period.

Watch a short clip from the seminal Mike Leigh play ' Abigail's Party', made for BBC television in 1977.

It's a process he first began to toy with in 1965 when he directed his first play, The Box Play, at the Midlands Art Centre. The process was honed over the next few years after his move from Birmingham to London and the East 15 theatre and the making of Bleak Moments. In 1971, at the age of 28, he decided to turn this uncompromising tale of a secretary who has to care for her mentally retarded sister into a film.

Leigh reportedly gathers his actors together on the first day of pre-production and lets them know that over the next six months they'll be working together to create a film. Then he works with his actors individually until he feels they are sufficiently "in character" to interact with other cast members.

To describe the process as "ensemble" would be a mistake; it's more like Leigh the acting coach giving private tuition to his favourite pupils. The method is not without its pitfalls; David Thewlis was bemused that Leigh got sole writing credit on Naked when he argued that most of the words that he spoke on screen were created by himself, not the director.

It is hard to know for certain what happens in this process of coming up with the films, as Leigh insists on total secrecy from his actors during production and will often be uncommunicative about the process and his thoughts on the film. He has said that he didn't want to do a DVD commentary for Vera Drake because "only some films lend themselves to it". It's a shame, because when he can be bothered to add a commentary, as he did on Topsy-Turvy, a biopic of the 19th-century light opera composers Gilbert and Sullivan, it is highly illuminating. It's the promise of such exposition that makes the forthcoming book of interviews a must for anyone interested in film.

Leigh's previous unwillingness to volunteer information on certain topics has made him an awkward interviewee, and it's this perceived stand-offishness that may have contributed to him not receiving the plaudits his work deserves in Britain. Like a mischievous child, Leigh seems to take pleasure in being difficult. There is nothing wrong in insisting that the work should speak for itself; it's an attitude frequently voiced by French directors, so it's hardly surprising that Leigh's films do better box-office in France.

Leigh's oeuvre can be characterised by an obsession with tragicomic characters living at the wrong end of the social spectrum. He essays characters who inevitably make us feel better about ourselves only because we realise that our lives might not be that bad after all. He deals with universal, seemingly mundane themes such as relationships (usually ones that fail), family, births and deaths. Despite the comedy, the prevailing sense when the end credits roll is that the films are morbid. Even the heart-warming aspects of All Or Nothing are battered by the depression of the characters.

Happy-Go-Lucky marks a departure for the Salford-born director, as his central character Poppy seems to have a fulfilled life. The first thing we see happen to Poppy is that her bicycle gets stolen. Such events may be a common occurrence on the streets of Camden, north London, where the film is set, but here on the cinema screen it momentarily harks back to Vittorio De Sica's 1948 Italian neo-realist classic The Bicycle Thief – that is, until Poppy shrugs her shoulders and laughs it off, making it clear that, surprisingly, the title of the movie is not ironic.

Sally Hawkins plays Poppy rather like the coyote from the children's cartoon Road Runner. No matter what obstacles are put in her way, she gets right back up and gets on with it. The first impression given of Poppy is that she has been transplanted from some grotesque parallel universe. Hawkins, who is in every scene, tests our desire to side with her character by hamming up her performance and pushing the boundaries of believability. She's a bewildering comic pastiche of a working-class girl and Paris Hilton. She has no sense of responsibility, so it's a surprise when we see her at work... as a primary-school teacher.

Having established such a character, Leigh does something remarkable; he makes us fall in love with Poppy, and at the same time gives us a state-of-the-nation assessment of Britain. The end of the Blair decade has seen a surge of artists and writers focus their attention on contemporary life, and there is no one more qualified in British cinema than Leigh to take a stab at it.

Leigh does this by replacing one of his favourite characters, the taxi-driver, with a driving instructor. Eddie Marsan is brilliant as the raconteur on the woes of modern British life. These are awkward and at times preachy sentiments, encapsulated by a moment in which Marsan orders his pupil to lock the car doors when he sees two black youths on bikes.

Typically, Leigh directs the bleakest scenes for laughs. He uses Poppy's occupation to emphasise the importance of looking after children to ensure they do not grow up with serious hang-ups, but other than that life is shown in the most positive light of any of his pictures.

The sunny disposition of the director seems to have stemmed from the success of Vera Drake. The film was originally rejected by Cannes, and its subsequent win at Venice and Oscar nominations seemed to validate Leigh in his own mind. Interviews with the director since Vera Drake have talked more about his humour than his perceived sour attitude. He also seems to want to open up more. His recent play at the National Theatre, Two Thousand Years, was a rare example of the director displaying his roots as the son of a Jewish couple. Although he is now an atheist, it was a moment when the director finally seemed content to talk about who he is and where he came from. He's also seemingly finding it harder to hide the fact that under the seemingly hard exterior is a man who, more and more, gives the impression of being happy-go-lucky.

'Happy-Go-Lucky' opens on 18 April. 'Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh' is published by Faber & Faber on 1 May