![]() ![]() Timothy Spall plays this character with so much empathy that it almost hurts. It’s a trait of his that persists outside of the workplace as well. Maurice’s photography sessions are fascinating too – he’s always trying to capture people at their best moments, and trying to get them to smile or be happy, even when they aren’t. Hortense’s storyline, in particular, is much more quiet and pensive than the others at first, with the music and images creating much more of a mood piece. There is a scene when Hortense finally meets her birth mother, but the actor who plays her birth mother was not told what she looks like, so her reaction was completely genuine. Leigh’s films always maintain the utmost level of reality and groundedness, and despite the long preparation process, he’s not averse to go to certain lengths to maintain authenticity. Leigh has a special relationship and process with his actors – famously, he often starts with a barebones script or no script at all, and through months of improvisation and rehearsals, fleshes out the story and characters in an intense and collaborative process with the actors. There is not a single weak link in the cast, though many of them put on quite understated performances as the film starts out. When you have Lesley Manville and Ruth Sheen in bit part cameos, that’s saying something. Like a theatre company, Leigh has a rotating troupe of actors that he uses regularly, and the ensemble cast here is spellbinding. The fact that Hortense is black means the film tackles the issue of race in a way that Leigh has not otherwise had to do, but it has held up remarkably well. Then there is Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), a single optometrist in her late twenties whose adopted mother has just died, and she decides to seek out her birth parents. His sister Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn) is a single mother working at a cardboard box factory and raising a teenage girl who hates her. There is Maurice (Timothy Spall), a photographer stuck in an unhappy marriage. ![]() As he has done before and since, Leigh follows different working class families in the UK and weaves their stories together. Released in 1996 to great acclaim, Secrets & Lies won the Palme D’Or and surprisingly garnered five Oscar nominations (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actress, and Best Supporting Actress). It is likely his most accessible, along with Vera Drake, which is more mainstream and probably less of a reliable indicator of whether one might enjoy Leigh’s style. It is hard to categorically point to a single one as his best work, but Secrets & Lies is a strong contender. As with many great filmmakers, Mike Leigh’s filmography is an interesting one to navigate. ![]()
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