Despair is the name of Leigh’s game

When did we fall into such a collective pit of cinematic despair? You’d be excused for thinking that we had if you, as I did, sat through both “Blue Valentine” and “Another Year” if not back to back then close enough to get depressed.

“Blue Valentine” I’ve already written about. One of the saddest five films ever made. “Another Year” was directed by Mike Leigh , which should tell you something right off. He’s the director of such party-hearty flicks as “Naked,” “Secrets & Lies” and the ironically titled “Happu-Go-Lucky.”

Not that I’m being critical of his filmmaking abilities. Leigh’s ability to mine emotions is unparalleled, and he always gets the best from his cast. It’s just that you need a bottle of Prozac just to get through the night after seeing anything he directs.

“Another Year,” for example, is kind of a cross between “Happy-Go-Lucky” and “Secrets & Lies” in that it deals with one fairly well adjusted and, well, perky family … and the collection of life’s losers who parade in and out of their comfortable little suburban London home.

One of the worst of the paraders is Mary ( Lesley Manville ), a woman so desperate for connection that she virtually adopts our little duo of Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen). Trouble is, Mary is emotionally unequipped for life, unable to forge intimacy in ways that Tom and Gerri take so lightly. And, slowly, we watch as she falls apart — not really that long a trek.

Some of the movie’s scenes are pure torture, such as when you see Mary or Tom’s alcoholic friend Ken, another hanger-on, trying to be part of this little domestic scene while pouring enough alcohol into themselves to ward off the pain of knowing that they’ll never know this kind of closeness.

In the end, I’m not sure whether I even like Tom and Gerri. Not that they’ve cold people but that they’re so ruthlessly normal and self-possessed. It’s almost as if they hold out the promise of something that the Marys and Kens of the world can see, even touch but will never possess for their own. And when their son, with whom they have a casually close relationship, brings home the perfectly perky girlfriend, I almost groaned.

At least I stuck around. Our screen started with 12 and ended with barely half still in their seats. As I said, torture.