SECRETS AND LIES
A film review by Martin Rich
Copyright 1996 Martin Rich
'Secrets and Lies', the latest film from Mike Leigh, is a complex story built around a simple theme. It asks how effectively we can live behind secrets, and looks at how little we might actually know about others in our own family. Its message, if it has one, is that openness helps - even if it's painful, and that even when the truth is ugly we're better for knowing it.
It centres around three households in very different parts of London: a young, black, single woman working as an optometrist, an upwardly mobile photographer and his wife, and a mother and her road-sweeper daughter living in a tiny, run-down, terraced house. All are connected, though to say why would be to give away too much of the film.
Like all Mike Leigh's films, this one was built up using improvisation. But its plot has a direction and a coherence which belie the method used to create it. There are points where Mike Leigh plays tricks on the audience, sometimes by involving us in the deceit that's at the centre of the film, sometimes by presenting us with scenes which may, or may not, be significant in the rest of the narrative.
Interestingly, the strongest dynamics in the film are between the women; even though the photographer is an important part, he acts as a foil to the other characters' arguments, most effectively while serving the meat from a barbecue. All the performances and characterisations are good - and the actors have resisted the temptation to develop into caricatures. Marianne Jean-Baptiste, as Hortense, the optometrist with the incredibly mobile face, and Brenda Blethyn as Cynthia, the nervous single mother both excel, but Timothy Spall as the photographer, and Phyllis Logan as his prim, obsessive, wife are also good.
Throughout the film there are incidents which touch on the themes of truth and honesty, moments where you wonder whether characters are telling the truth or not. What about the photographer's client who ascribes her facial injuries to the seat belt breaking in a car accident (she needs the picture to claim compensation)? And do we believe Hortense's friend who brags in the kitchen about her sexual exploits?
'Secrets and Lies' opens this week in the UK, and the interest that it generated at Cannes should ensure a reasonable international release. At a preview this weekend, the audience broke into a spontaneous round of applause as the credits rolled, applause which was well deserved.
-- Martin Rich City University Business School M.G.Rich@city.ac.uk http://www.city.ac.uk/~sf309/home.html
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