Life Is Sweet is a 1990 British comedy-drama film directed by Mike Leigh, starring Alison Steadman, Jim Broadbent, Claire Skinner, Jane Horrocks and Timothy Spall. Leigh's third cinematic film, it was his most commercially successful title at the time of release. A tragi-comic story, it follows the fortunes of a working-class North London family over a few weeks one summer. Plot On a hot summer weekend lunchtime, Andy (a senior chef in a large London catering facility) impulsively buys a dilapidated fast-food van touted by a disreputable acquaintance, Patsy, who has unexpectedly called at his home. Andy plans to restore the van for use on a local fast-food round. Wendy, his hard-working, good-natured and innuendo-prone wife, is sensibly sceptical about the project but understands her husband's ambitions. Their twin 22-year-old daughters (Natalie and Nicola) have profoundly different attitudes: tomboyish Natalie, thinks it is a good idea if it will make her father happy, whereas the bitter, shut-in Nicola, contemptuously and typically dismisses Andy as a "Capitalist!" Late that night, an anguished Nicola binges on chocolate and snacks, then forces herself to vomit. Natalie, awake in her adjacent bedroom and looking through USA travel brochures, overhears: her reactions indicate this is something she is painfully familiar with. Meanwhile, Aubrey (Timothy Spall) - a hyperactive but emotionally labile family friend- is opening a Parisian-themed restaurant named The Regret Rien. Wendy accepts a part-time job as waitress in the restaurant, but her and Andy's initial confidence in the scheme is undermined by Aubrey's unorthodox approach to the interior décor (a cluttered, half-realised combination of outmoded French clichés, such as a bicycle in the bay window, and of tasteless Victoriana, such as a stuffed cat's head framed by broken accordion sconces) and by his menu. His singularly grotesque interpretation of the excesses of nouvelle cuisine includes dishes such as saveloy on a bed of lychees, liver in lager and pork cyst. During the afternoon, whilst the rest of the family are out at work, Nicola's lover comes to the family home to have sex with her. It appears that Nicola only can be aroused by a combination of light bondage and the consumption of chocolate spread from her chest – a practice to which he only reluctantly agrees. Trying to engage and understand her, he ultimately loses patience with her combative attitude, concluding she is "a bit vacant" and incapable of having a sincere,