Secrets & Lies (1996) – 4/5

Family drama as touching as entertaining, this one has it all

„Secrets & Lies“ is a co-production between the United Kingdom and France from 1996, even if I do wonder where the French component stems from. Very British film we have here and it is thus also fairly fitting that I watched it tonight on the occasion of a British film retrospective that showed us some of the finest films from the UK. And as you can see from my rating, I really enjoyed the watch. I would even go so far and say that this was the best from the entire retrospective I have seen so far and I have seen many. That’s why I also thought it was quite a shame that visitor-wise the film was at the other end of the scale and there really weren’t too many people in the audience and the film was also not shown another five times which could have explained it. Anyway, this one was nominated for a total of five Academy Awards at the end of the last century/millennium, but it won none. Two of the nominations went to Mike Leigh and this film here is by far not his only inclusion in this UK film retrospective. He turned 80 a month ago and is maybe retired now, but can easily be called one of the finest British filmmakers of the last 50 years, if not the number one. I had not seen too much from him before, so I am glad this retrospective introduced me to his body of work. This was a sublime film. The third Oscar nomination was the big category of the night Best Picture, while the other two were acting nominations. Brenda Blethyn’s lead performance was maybe where the film had its best chance to triumph as she won a Golden Globe, a BAFTA and also the Palme d’Or before that. Okay, Cannes is a long time before the Oscars, but still. It was kinda obvious her performance would keep making waves for the rest of the season. In Cannes, by the way, the film itself also won big. The second acting Oscar nomination went to Marianne Jean-Baptiste, who was not a lock for the nomination at all, but eventually found her way in. It surely helped that her character is really likable in here. I am definitely hesitant though to call her a supporting performance as without her character there would not really be a movie or plot we have here and she also has many scenes on her own away from the other protagonists.

The cast order surprises me a bit there too with Blethyn in second only and MJB in fifth. The first credit here went to Timothy Spall, who was really the only bigger male character if we ignore Lee Ross‘ character for a moment. I like Spall, but that was surely too much. He still gave a nice performance and pity he could not score the Oscar nomination there. He was probably as close as he was for „Mr. Turner“ more recently where he collaborated with Leigh again after all those years. Nice to see. And Spall surely looks interesting here with his beard, a bit like a man from the backwoods. If his character is lead, is more debatable. I think you can call him supporting. The only thing that makes me question this is that he has this scene when a former colleague or previous owner of his business/workplace shows up and there this scene is not one bit about Blethyn’s or Jean-Baptiste’s character. As for the cast, we could also mention Lesley Manville. She only has one scene, but was a real scene stealer there, also fairly attractive back in the day. Now let’s look a bit at the plot of the film: This is almost a full-on family drama you can say. Very rarely you will find comedic inclusions like the protagonist struggling with another character’s name and indeed Cumberbatch is apparently not a name that only Benedict carries. He was far away from stardom back then. My favorite comedy moment in here was extremely brief: We have a Black couple with kids and they are making a point that the place would be much more suitable for them to live in than for some other character because it is a big place and they are simply more people. There the woman says something along the lines that perhaps more children could follow and the man’s reaction was briefly in shock, but the dialogue moves away from this quickly. I still found it so hilarious I just have to mention this moment in detail. Shows that Leigh is also a great comedy writer indeed.

Anyway, now we go on to the more dramatic parts. You can say that the film started as a drama, then did get a little bit lighter in the second half when the two main characters were getting along nicely and finally it ends with full-on drama, even if the very last scene is one that will make you smile when you have the two half-sisters next to each other making plans about the future and going out together and their mother arrives and brings them some tea as if they were still her little girls. The one thing I liked before that was that so much got revealed, but not everything. The female protagonist could not speak about the Black woman’s father in terms of who he was. It seems likely that perhaps she was raped there, but we cannot know for sure. That theory is also supported by her saying on one occasion that she had never been with a Black man, so most likely it was not consensual. In any case, it was an encounter she does not like to think back about. She almost forgot about it and took a while for her to remember who the father must be. In the end, more secrets come to light. We find out about the father of her White daughter and maybe it will help the mother-daughter relationship there as well that she finally opened up about him. At the same time, we find out about Spall’s character’s wife that she cannot become a mother physically, which was a touching moment then too to see her and Blethyn’s character there with the latter comforting her after this revelation. So Blethyn’s character is definitely very much on the likable side, even if she has flaws herself too. There was one scene in particular that stayed in the mind for me and that was when she just won’t stop bothering her daughter in terms of birth control measures. I found her extremely unlikable there and even if I understand that her becoming a grandmother would cause a lot of stress, I thought she should have accepted her daughter’s boundaries much more than she did. But this was really the only flaw I can think of.

What also stayed in the mind was the scene she had with Spall, who played her younger brother, later on and how she hugs him so dearly and there you can say that she is quite lonesome indeed because of the struggles with her daughter and also because Spall’s character never seeks a lot of contact. Her words during one phone conversation when she said she never does anything also stay in the mind. As for Spall’s character, I could write so much about him too. He is the one who in the end comes up in this escalation sequence with the words that you can read as the title of the film. You also see him (or rather hear him) during work and how he finds the right words to say to his clients while taking their photos. To make them smile or at least make them the offer that they can smile. This was a nice inclusion I thought and interesting distraction. I also liked his approach to do the job himself and work with fewer clients than instead of delegating the work like the previous photographer would do. It was also a kinda ironic moment there when he tells Spall’s character then after his hissy fit that he can call him anytime to employ him. But this scene also showed that Spall’s character managed to turn it into a direction where he acted in a pretty empathic fashion and kept it from escalation even further. The words at the end from one (pretty, but fairly minor) character who says she always would have loved a father like Spall’s character were really sweet. Indeed a very likable character, maybe my most likable from the film year 1996, and at least he got some appreciation there if the actor did not get the appreciation for the Academy back then.

I think this is pretty much it then. It is a very long movie at over 140 minutes, so it is closer to the 2.5-hour mark than the 2-hour mark even, but it never dragged, was always entertaining and also touching, especially towards the end, I could not move my eyes away from the screen and they might have gotten a little wet. Despite the massive length, the film flew by and I would not have cut anything. Every scene had its purpose and added quality here, also for example the conversation between the Black woman and her friend or the conversations between mother and new-found daughter anyway. The table scene outside when they were eating together before it all escalated was sweet too. I liked the statement there from one character how eating together brings you together in a special way too and you also smile on quite a few occasions throughout the film because of the character’s mannerisms like for example towards the end when Spall’s character’s wife opens the door and does not thing the Black woman is who she is. Or her eyes also immediately after when the latter has come inside. But it is okay, she was still a nice host and not a racist or anything. People back then were (thank God!) not as sensitive as they are today. So yeah, huge thumbs-up from me for this film here. I enjoyed the watch so much. Eventually, I was maybe even closer to saying this is a really, really great film than to saying it was just an okay movie, but for now the description „good“ and 4 stars out of 5 feels accurate. A definite contender for my favorite full feature film from 1996. I highly recommend the watch.