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You can stream Meantime (1983) on Criterion Channel with a subscription.

A working-class family in London's East End is struggling to stay afloat during the recession under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's premiership. Only the mother Mavis is working; father Frank and the couple's two sons Colin, a timid, chronically shy individual and Mark, an outspoken, headstrong young man, are on the dole. This situation is contrasted by the presence of Mavis's sister Barbara, and her husband John, whose financial and social loftiness appears to be a comfortable facade over the unspoken soreness of a lackluster marriage.

Can a family survive the crushing weight of a recession when the breadwinner is the only one left working? This raw portrait of London's East End captures the friction between restless youth and economic decay with startling authenticity.

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