1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 63: Secrets & lies
Is this the best movie of 1996? I think so. It has as much heart as Shine and as much cinematic virtuosity as Fargo. Secrets & Lies is a high-wire act, a controlled outpouring of uncontrolled emotion and verbiage with close-ups of tears, glares, and twitches.
When serious acting so outrageously violates the “less is more” principle, it has to be very, very skillful to come off as well as it does here.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Hortense’s adoptive parents have died. Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), a young optometrist, makes an appointment with a social worker, played by one of director Mike Leigh’s regulars, the great Lesley Manville. If you want to contact your birth family, the social worker tells her, consider using our agency: we’re professionals.
The social worker is full of words but also, somehow, distant. She’s an energetic bureaucrat going through the motions.
Hortense chooses to look up her birth family on her own.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
One discovery surprises her. Although Hortense is black, the birth records say that her mother is white. Of course, as a matter of genetics, that’s not unusual, and Hortense and the other characters accept it readily enough.
What is truly shocking to Hortense’s biological family is that Hortense should exist at all. The mother, Cynthia (the spectacular Brenda Blethyn), has kept quiet about her first child, whom she gave away at the tender age of sixteen without having seen.
Cynthia is easy for Hortense to find. She resides at the same grubby East London address where she grew up. She’s had a hard life, working in a factory and raising, on her own, a second daughter – who is white – the scowling street-sweeper Roxanne (Claire Rushbrook). Previously, Cynthia cared for her father (now deceased) and her younger brother, the gentle, affable Maurice (Timothy Spall).
Cynthia habitually quarrels with Roxanne but seldom sees Maurice, who has moved with his class-anxious wife, Monica (Phyllis Logan), into a large house in a richer part of town. Maurice has “made good.” He runs a small but prosperous photography studio. He shoots weddings and portraits. Often, he must play peacemaker with his subjects, as he has been forced to do among Monica, Cynthia, and Roxanne.
He radiates goodness. So does Hortense. Either of them would make a worthy hero. But, arguably, the hero of this story is the least reasonable person: the lonely, volatile Cynthia. She may be difficult to live with, but she really has given her all.
It took many viewings for me to decide that she is the hero.
A Mike Leigh protagonist is multifaceted. He or she might seem wonderful upon one viewing and beyond-the-pale awful the next time. Or vice versa.
Who is the hero of the Book of Ruth? (God, of course; but which of the humans is most heroic?)
Is it the young title character, who bravely throws in her lot with her griefstricken second mother? Is it the hospitable Boaz?
Or is it old Naomi? She doesn’t just rest in the unexpected love of her new daughter. Instead, she sets up a proper home for Ruth by contriving – perhaps rather desperately and comically – to bring her fully into the family.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
As in Fargo, there’s one memorable sequence in Secrets & Lies that bears a significance that isn’t immediately obvious.
Maurice photographs a beautiful young woman in his studio. A hideous scar runs across one side of her face. She is a car crash victim. The photographs are for her insurers – she has lost her job as a beauty consultant – and also, perhaps, for use in a lawsuit. The woman is consumed by bitterness.
Someone always draws the short straw, Maurice reflects (and not for the first time).
As soon as the woman leaves, a disheveled man crosses the street and walks into the studio. He is the previous owner. Years ago, he sold the business to Maurice and moved to Australia, where he failed to establish himself. Now he has returned. He, too, is consumed by bitterness.
There but for the grace of God go I, Maurice reflects.
These two characters have no influence on what happens between Hortense and her new family. Why are they in the movie? The implicit contrast is with Cynthia, who also “drew the short straw.” Like these people, she is lonely and sad and desperate. But she isn’t consumed by bitterness. She is still able to love and to be loved, and that is what saves her and her family.
Not that she and her family don’t have bitterness or meanness to overcome. The movie is called “secrets and lies,” after all. There is the secret of Hortense, Cynthia’s first child; and Monica & Maurice have a secret as well.
I am not doing justice to this rich movie.
P.S. When I first saw it, as a teenager in a Quito cinema, the color looked washed out – as in the above image. It looked washed out every time I saw the movie on VHS or DVD. Now the color is vibrant. It seems to have been touched up for the movie’s re-release through Criterion. The movie has become beautiful to look at; it is not only a balm for the soul.
When serious acting so outrageously violates the “less is more” principle, it has to be very, very skillful to come off as well as it does here.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Hortense’s adoptive parents have died. Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), a young optometrist, makes an appointment with a social worker, played by one of director Mike Leigh’s regulars, the great Lesley Manville. If you want to contact your birth family, the social worker tells her, consider using our agency: we’re professionals.
The social worker is full of words but also, somehow, distant. She’s an energetic bureaucrat going through the motions.
Hortense chooses to look up her birth family on her own.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
One discovery surprises her. Although Hortense is black, the birth records say that her mother is white. Of course, as a matter of genetics, that’s not unusual, and Hortense and the other characters accept it readily enough.
What is truly shocking to Hortense’s biological family is that Hortense should exist at all. The mother, Cynthia (the spectacular Brenda Blethyn), has kept quiet about her first child, whom she gave away at the tender age of sixteen without having seen.
Cynthia is easy for Hortense to find. She resides at the same grubby East London address where she grew up. She’s had a hard life, working in a factory and raising, on her own, a second daughter – who is white – the scowling street-sweeper Roxanne (Claire Rushbrook). Previously, Cynthia cared for her father (now deceased) and her younger brother, the gentle, affable Maurice (Timothy Spall).
Cynthia habitually quarrels with Roxanne but seldom sees Maurice, who has moved with his class-anxious wife, Monica (Phyllis Logan), into a large house in a richer part of town. Maurice has “made good.” He runs a small but prosperous photography studio. He shoots weddings and portraits. Often, he must play peacemaker with his subjects, as he has been forced to do among Monica, Cynthia, and Roxanne.
He radiates goodness. So does Hortense. Either of them would make a worthy hero. But, arguably, the hero of this story is the least reasonable person: the lonely, volatile Cynthia. She may be difficult to live with, but she really has given her all.
It took many viewings for me to decide that she is the hero.
A Mike Leigh protagonist is multifaceted. He or she might seem wonderful upon one viewing and beyond-the-pale awful the next time. Or vice versa.
Who is the hero of the Book of Ruth? (God, of course; but which of the humans is most heroic?)
Is it the young title character, who bravely throws in her lot with her griefstricken second mother? Is it the hospitable Boaz?
Or is it old Naomi? She doesn’t just rest in the unexpected love of her new daughter. Instead, she sets up a proper home for Ruth by contriving – perhaps rather desperately and comically – to bring her fully into the family.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
As in Fargo, there’s one memorable sequence in Secrets & Lies that bears a significance that isn’t immediately obvious.
Maurice photographs a beautiful young woman in his studio. A hideous scar runs across one side of her face. She is a car crash victim. The photographs are for her insurers – she has lost her job as a beauty consultant – and also, perhaps, for use in a lawsuit. The woman is consumed by bitterness.
Someone always draws the short straw, Maurice reflects (and not for the first time).
As soon as the woman leaves, a disheveled man crosses the street and walks into the studio. He is the previous owner. Years ago, he sold the business to Maurice and moved to Australia, where he failed to establish himself. Now he has returned. He, too, is consumed by bitterness.
There but for the grace of God go I, Maurice reflects.
These two characters have no influence on what happens between Hortense and her new family. Why are they in the movie? The implicit contrast is with Cynthia, who also “drew the short straw.” Like these people, she is lonely and sad and desperate. But she isn’t consumed by bitterness. She is still able to love and to be loved, and that is what saves her and her family.
Not that she and her family don’t have bitterness or meanness to overcome. The movie is called “secrets and lies,” after all. There is the secret of Hortense, Cynthia’s first child; and Monica & Maurice have a secret as well.
I am not doing justice to this rich movie.
P.S. When I first saw it, as a teenager in a Quito cinema, the color looked washed out – as in the above image. It looked washed out every time I saw the movie on VHS or DVD. Now the color is vibrant. It seems to have been touched up for the movie’s re-release through Criterion. The movie has become beautiful to look at; it is not only a balm for the soul.