Secrets & Lies (1996)

Film: Secrets & Lies

Director: Mike Leigh

Country: UK

Released: May 1996

Runtime: 142 minutes

Genre: Drama

Studio: Thin Man Films, Channel Four Films

Influenced: Andrea Arnold, Noah Baumbach, Lynne Ramsay, Alfonso Cuarón, Sean Baker

With Secrets & Lies, Mike Leigh updated the kitchen sink drama for modern 90s Britain. While the film addresses many of the themes that are mainstays of Leigh’s filmography such as families, relationships, children, etc – the "stuff of life", if you like – it’s also more specifically about identity and the need for belonging. Few films I've watched feel so natural and real, to the extent that it's almost like watching a documentary, an impression that is testament to the quality of the acting and Leigh's unique approach to making movies. Leigh would spend months with each of his actors, creating unique and detailed backstories for each of them, and often withholding the overall plot from them until the actual filming begins. In the case of Secrets & Lies, the film's main plot reveal was kept hidden from the cast until the moment of truth.

The film's plot primarily revolves around Hortense Cumberbatch (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), a young black woman who was adopted as a child by a white, middle-class family and who now works as an optometrist. After the death of her adoptive mother, Hortense decides to search for her birth mother. She discovers that her biological mother is Cynthia Purley (Brenda Blethyn), a working-class woman living in London. Cynthia's life is marked by hardships, including strained relationships with her daughter Roxanne (Claire Rushbrook) and her brother Maurice (Timothy Spall). As the story unfolds, secrets from the past are revealed and family relationships are tested. Hortense's unexpected arrival into Cynthia's life stirs up a variety of emotions and secrets within the Purley family, causing them to confront their shared history and personal struggles. Leigh builds tension so well throughout the film and the secret of Cynthia being the birth mother of Hortense feels increasingly like a ticking time bomb about to go off.

Leigh's film has many outstanding features, but for me the highlights are the two incredible long takes, the first in the café when Cynthia recalls the events around Hortense's conception, and the other the climactic barbecue scene. For the plot to work, we have to understand that Cynthia was so traumatised by the act of giving birth that she was unable to even lay eyes on her child. Secrets & Lies was widely celebrated for its diverse cast, both in terms of race and class, and its portrayal of interracial relationships. The film explores issues of race and identity in a sensitive and realistic manner, and Leigh's unique approach to character development, which involves lengthy improvisation sessions with the actors, allows for deep, multi-dimensional characters who feel genuine and relatable. The director has said in interviews that the film actually led to lots of people going in search of their birth mothers.

Secrets & Lies received widespread critical acclaim and garnered numerous awards and nominations, including the Palme d'Or at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival. The film also received five Oscar nominations, including Best Director for Mike Leigh, and two Oscar nominations for acting performances (Brenda Blethyn and Marianne Jean-Baptiste), but somehow didn't won a single Oscar. It did however win numerous British Academy Film Awards (BAFTAs), as well as the Best Actress award at Cannes for Blethyn. Leigh's next feature film, Topsy-Turvy (1999), a period piece exploring the lives of Gilbert & Sullivan, was a departure from his typical contemporary dramas, but after that he would return to the kitchen sink genre that he's most associated with, including the wonderful Vera Drake (2004), about a kind-hearted woman who performs illegal abortions in 1950s England.