A light and warmhearted look for newest Ken Loach film 'Looking for Eric'

That a group of postal workers, when inspired, can accomplish the impossible is the ultimately cheering message of Ken Loach's "Looking for Eric," a tough yet sweet comedy about a man enduring middle-age crisis. Eric Bishop (Steve Evets) is a Manchester mailman who's raising his loutish stepsons alone (their mother, his second wife, took off years ago) and dreaming about his long- estranged first wife, Lily (Stephanie Bishop), who's back in his life as they share care of a new grandchild. Depressed, Eric knows it was a mistake to have left Lily long ago, and dwells on it, detached from his humdrum life. "I feel like I'm floating and looking down on myself," he says.

Loach, whose long history in independent film includes the beautiful Irish drama "The Wind That Shakes the Barley," is in a lighter mode here than usual, and in fact "Looking for Eric" is at times downright whimsical: Eric, in a recreational-drug-induced stupor, stares at a poster in his bedroom of footballer Eric Cantona of Manchester United — and sure enough, Cantona turns up in the room, offering sage advice and looking handsomely amused.

Together, Cantona and Eric's fellow postal employees help him sort himself out, from joining him in practicing techniques from self-help books ("Do you have to have met the person?" asks one colleague, when told to "think of someone who loves you") to rising to the occasion when stepson Ryan gets himself into potentially dangerous trouble. The film feels a little slow at times, but its characters always seem real, and the final scene is genuinely heartwarming: a family, however tentative, finding its way back home.

Moira Macdonald:

206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com