Leigh's most overlooked film-and, according to the director, "my most radical"-this is the tale of a young funeral parlor assistant named Trevor. Trevor walks on his tip-toes, as if he were afraid of waking the dead, nervously laughs away all affection for the living but tenderly tends to the departed. In his spare time, Trevor makes three a crowd with his friend Ronnie and Ronnie's girlfriend Sandra (who looks wondrously like Betty Boop), until Sandra takes the situation in hand by introducing Trevor to Linda. A few non-dates, a few uncomfortable flirtatious spats, and we witness Trevor's right of passage into the world of the living: his first non-kiss, one of the most awkwardly protracted moments in cinema. There's always a breakdown in a Mike Leigh film and we can hardly wait for Trevor to suffer his. His moment of self-knowledge is just that (you have to listen closely to catch it) but the film hinges on it. This is genuine black comedy, and Leigh insures that we keep our distance from the subject matter in clever ways (dialogue slips almost imperceptibly from cremation to disco-dancing). But Ronnie & Sandra & Trevor & Linda are a younger, poorer version of the lot in Abigail's Party; already, they have no direction in life, and this is precisely the direction in which they will continue.