It is a testimony to a director's creative vision and opus that Secrets and Lies can be most simply identified as a 'Mike Leigh film'. The phrase instantly evokes images of his funny, moving, sympathetic and critical portraits from the wastelands of modern suburban Britain.
Throughout his career, Leigh has somehow managed to maintain his unique creative vision against all the odds, a square peg in a round hole from the very beginning. At the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, where he studied acting, Leigh was considered such a difficult student that not only was he threatened with having his scholarship withdrawn, but was denied his diploma after he had completed the course.
His debut feature, Bleak Moments (1971), which won awards in Chicago and Locarno, signalled the arrival of a singular talent. In the ensuing years, Meantime (1983), High Hopes (1988) and Life is Sweet (1991) were all fêted at festivals around the world; and he proved equally adept in the feature hiatus when his career stalled through funding delays on stage and in television with titles like Abigail's Party.
In 1993, Leigh arrived at Cannes with Naked and the film garnered an award for Best Director - as well as Best Actor for David Thewlis, its leading man. "My on-going preoccupation is with families, relationships, parents, children, sex, work, surviving, being born and dying," Leigh told the International Herald Tribune last year. "I'm not an intellectual filmmaker. Primarily, my films are a response to the way people are, the way things are as I experience them. In a way, they are acts of taking the temperature."
Leigh's method of working (where his cast are forced to live the parts and improvise, rather than recite their lines by rote) and his unique artistic vision have combined to create one of the UK's most original filmmakers. Leigh's vision confronts us with the complexity, frailty and idiosyncrasies inherent in human beings and nature and the reality is not always pretty.
In Secrets and Lies, Leigh again returns to familiar territory, but the film represents perhaps his most technically-accomplished and commercially-accessible work to date. Interestingly enough, given the fact that Leigh has always been considered a 'very English' director, the major funding for the film came from France's Ciby 2000, a sign of his burgeoning international reputation and acceptance. This was confirmed last month when BAFTA recognised his achievements with the Michael Balcon award for lifetime achievement.
Multi-talented actress Marianne Jean-Baptiste plays Hortense, a young black optometrist living in London. Upon the death of her adopted mother, she sets out to track down the woman who gave birth to her. To her surprise and initial consternation, her natural mother, Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn), turns out to be a white factory worker a sad single mother who lives with her unhappy progeny (Claire Rushbrook) in a shabby, terraced house.
By way of contrast, Cynthia's brother, Maurice, underplayed to perfection by Mike Leigh stalwart Timothy Spall, is a prosperous wedding photographer. The sibling differences are further emphasised by Maurice's beautifully-decorated house and the efforts of his childless wife, brought to life by Phyllis Logan (Another Time, Another Place).
Overcoming her initial reactions and coming to terms with the fact that Hortense is black, Cynthia develops a warm and loving relationship with her daughter, but things go awry when she tries to introduce Hortense into her own little world. Hortense attends a party Maurice throws and, in a traumatic moment, lets slip the truth that Cynthia is her mother a truth the film's other characters are unaware of. All hell breaks loose as the family's 'secrets and lies' are gradually revealed.
Reminiscent of Leigh's earlier work, Secrets and Lies captures the humour, warmth and compassion that comprise an essential part of his character and artistic creativity. Naked might have been a tour-de-force, but it was Life is Sweet - whose tone Secrets and Lies echoes - that confirmed Leigh's commercial viability among international art-house audiences.
Secrets and Lies' official selection in competition and the distinct possibility that it will earn some plaudits at the festival (Best Actress, for one) should make it an attractive proposition for niche distributors, with the potential for some commercial crossover. While Secrets and Lies will never take him into the mainstream, in these topsy-turvy times for the independent sector, it still represents his best chance to date.
Tim Avis
Prod Co: Ciby 2000/Thin Man Production
Prod: Simon Channing-Williams
Dir/Scr: Mike Leigh
Ph: Dick Pope
Prod des: Alison Chitty
Cos: Maria Price
Mus: Andrew Dickson
Ed: Jon Gregory
Cast: Brenda Blethyn, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Timothy Spall, Phyllis Logan, Claire Rushbrook
Running time: 141mins
Int Sales: Ciby Sales
