Movie Review – Secrets & Lies

Secrets & Lies (1996)
Written and directed by Mike Leigh

Mike Leigh has presented us with some of the best British female film performances of the latter half of the 20th century. He has a troupe of performers, many of whom are fantastic actresses – Alison Steadman, Ruth Sheen, Katrin Cartildge, and Sally Hawkins. The crown jewel among them is Lesley Manville, but more on her in a later review. It doesn’t surprise me that a filmmaker can bring out such strong performances with actresses he’s been collaborating with for decades. The rapport they share must be as smooth as butter by this point. The even more impressive feat is when he can get that same level of performance out of an actress he’s working with for the first time. Secrets & Lies provides two of these performances and is one of Leigh’s finest achievements.

A mother dies. Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) mourns. But now that her mother has passed, she believes it’s time to learn who the birth mother was that gave her up for adoption as a baby. A good friend warns Hortense that she might not like what she finds & a social worker cautions her about the weight of this choice. No, Hortense needs to know. Her mother turns out to be Cynthia Purley (Brenda Blethyn), a woman from London’s East End who works in a cardboard factory and has another adult daughter. That’s not the most shocking thing. That would be that Hortense is a black woman while Cynthia is white. To say that Cynthia, who is already not emotionally stable, reacts with intensity would be an understatement. However, as Cynthia’s relationship with her younger daughter (Claire Rushbrook) deteriorates, she finds the promise of a fresh start with Hortense much more pleasant.

The keystone scene of Secrets & Lies is the first meeting between Hortense and Cynthia. Cynthia never saw her baby; she refused to after the labor as she had already decided to give her up for adoption. Before the meeting, the two women only spoke over the phone. Leigh presents their first meeting in an extended eight-minute single-take shot of the women sitting side by side in a booth at a plain-looking cafe. They both face the camera, so they don’t have to look directly at each other if they choose. The moment when Cynthia puts the pieces together, remembering the one-off fling with a Black man decades ago, she collapses into hysterics. Hortense remains beside her, uncomfortable in the awkward silence being shattered by her birth mother’s howling sobs. This scene is such a perfect piece of cinema – everything you need to know about these characters is communicated in these eight minutes to the point you could present this scene as a complete short film, and it would work. 

This is not the only story being told in Secrets & Lies. Cynthia’s brother, Maurice (Timothy Spall), is a professional photographer who has done well. He’s made enough money to live in the suburbs with his wife, Monica (Phyllis Logan). They are a childless couple due to Monica’s infertility. That has caused her to develop intense depression and be withdrawn. Cynthia interprets this as her sister-in-law being a snob towards her, as she doesn’t know the truth. 

We also have Roxanne’s admiration of her Uncle Maurice. The young woman didn’t have a father growing up, as he was a passing acquaintance of her mother’s. Maurice stepped in to act as a father figure. That diminished once he & Monica moved to the suburbs, and it became more challenging to get into the city. We don’t see Roxanne and Maurice interact until the film’s final sequence, her 21st birthday party at Maurice & Monica’s home. Undeniably, she still admires him, her sullen persona falling away to something more childlike. This only intensifies Cynthia’s guilt over how she could have provided a better life for her daughter.

Leigh is a master of building rich, nuanced characters, placing them in rooms together, and letting them speak. This is why he so often employs the family unit in his dramas. Families come packed with conflict, history, and unspoken feelings about each other. To tell his story, Leigh begins with Cynthia, Hortense, and Maurice in isolation. We see Cynthia’s relationship with Roxanne. We see Maurice and Monica’s marriage. We spend time with Hortense as she recovers from her mother’s funeral and meets with a social worker (played by Leslie Manville, who delivers another stunning supporting performance). Each piece is methodically brought together a little at a time until the final sequence, where all our characters are finally in one place, and the truth begins to come out.

Through it all, the director carefully arranges the pieces of his story while giving space for the actors to explore their characters and how they relate to each other. Brenda Blethyn as Cynthia is one of the most stunning performances I’ve ever seen. She fully encapsulates the anxiety & insecurity a woman like Cynthia experiences. I’ve met the American equivalent as a primary school teacher in the States, and despite the difference in accent, the profound pain is so real. She’s not a very educated person & her emotional development didn’t continue much past her adolescence. That explains her interactions with Roxanne that don’t feel appropriate for a parent & child. But no one has ever been there to help her grow. Cynthia still clings to Maurice, literally & figuratively, and Spall gives an outstanding performance when she does this near the end. He quietly looks at her as she sobs and hugs him, begging for comfort, realization spreading over his face at what a sad state of affairs this family has fallen into.

Marianne Jean-Baptiste has a more complex role because she must play the opposite of Cynthia. That means a performance that isn’t particularly showy on the surface but contains a complicated interior world. We see the rich performance under the surface in Hortense’s reactions. Through exposition, we learn that she was raised by a caring but ultimately distant Black woman. There was an emphasis on propriety and how one presents oneself to the world. As a result, Hortense doesn’t wear her emotions on her sleeve like Cynthia, who lets them spill onto the floor in a splatter of tears. 

Of all Leigh’s films, Secrets & Lies enjoyed the strongest public reception to date, not just among critics but audiences too, earning a larger box office than Leigh films typically enjoy. It’s a shame that films like this are being drowned out now by escapism & spectacle. There was a time when all these things were more balanced at your local cineplex, but now the louder & flashier fare dominates the screens. There’s such a need for these kinds of movies, a reflection of people’s lives so that they may examine their own relationships and family dynamics. Instead, family is a team of superheroes now, something alien & distant from how we experience it in real life. This is the best to start with of all Leigh’s films as it provides a splendid introduction to what he does in the medium.