Why Mike Leigh's domestic dramas should be better known

I think I've said this in previous posts but it's worth nothing again that Mike Leigh is unappreciated as a serious contemporary filmmaker. Not that he's gone w/out accolades or commercial success, and not all of his movies are the kind of low-budget, shot on location, small cast, interior dramas that serve as the marker for serious independent filmmakers, but for those that fit this bill, notably Secrets and Lies, Another Year, and the film we watched last night, Lie Is Sweet (1990) should earn Leigh a place among the great auteurs of his/our time. In fact, if any of those 3 films were made in French, Swedish, or Romanian, they would I think have drawn far more critical attention and praise. Life Is Sweet set a patter for later Leigh films: A domestic drama about a working-class family in an English row-house suburb, generally making the best of tough times, spirited and, at least at first, seeming to love one another (although there's often a "difficult" child in or friend of the family), so that at first we think we're seeing a sweet family comedy abut then the fissures appear in the wall, the cracks widen, we see the trauma and trouble at the heart of the family, and we build toward a powerful and tearful confrontation and finally a partial, uneasy, still open-ended resolution. In Life Is Sweet the mom in the family (Wendy, played by Alison Steadman, and who reminded me of a later Leigh character, Poppy in Happy-go-lucky) has what at first seems to be an endearing laugh that lets her make light of various troubles - but we gradually see this laugh as an annoying and desperate attempt to avoid recognition of the family issues. A young James Broadbent is terrific as the well-meaning but easily conned dad. In fact the entire cast (including a very young David Thewliss) is terrific, there are some terrific comic moments - notably everything involving the failed attempt to open a French restaurant in the English Midlands commercial district - and terrific writing that seems to owe a debt to a British theater tradition, in which no doubt Leigh and all of the cast members first earned their chops. My only quibble is that it's extremely difficult at times for an American viewer to parse the think Midlands accents (especially in that the dialog is rapid and often said in soft voice) - but even missing a surprising # of lines we can still easily follow the drift - just by watching expressions and other body language. This film should be better known.