Mike Leigh has been long-fascinated with the rhythms inherent in a family. We carve out our identities, or often have them carved out for us by our loved ones. These selves that sometimes don’t reflect who we are at work, around friends, in life outside the home. But when we code-switch, which is really the true version of “self?” Children who have been long grown often revert to the roles they inhabited when visiting parents during holidays. These patterns, frequently adopted to disguise long-simmering hurt or betrayal, are often the focus in Leigh’s domestic dramas and perhaps none more so than in his 1996 masterpiece, Secrets & Lies.
Much of Secrets & Lies unfolds as if we’re peeking around corners, watching Leigh’s characters struggle with personal, yet hidden, pain. Everyone in the film is hurting but unwilling to reach out to others in the family. Instead, these aches breed misunderstanding and resentment. Secrets & Lies begins in media res in many ways. All of Leigh’s characters are struggling internally, but reluctant to open up and let others in, furthering wedges, grudges and resentments. This is a portrait of a family at a breaking point.
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In the most basic of terms, Secrets & Lies tells the story of a young optometrist named Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) who decides to seek out her birth mother following the death of her adopted mother. Hortense, who is Black, is shocked when she discovers that Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn), a white factory worker, is the woman who bore her. After much initial hesitation and self-recrimination, the women agree to meet and slowly they form a bond.
But Secrets & Lies is about so much more. Cynthia, who is a single mother, is reeling from loneliness and the difficult relationship with her daughter, Roxane (Claire Rushbrook), who cleans roads for the city. Roxane resents Cynthia for being a single mother and withholding the identity of her father. The women often fight, resulting with Roxane storming out to spend time with her boyfriend or drinking at the tub.
Leigh expands his cast beyond the nuclear family. Cynthia adores her photographer brother, Maurice (Timothy Spall), but hasn’t heard from him much, blaming his wife, Monica (Phyllis Logan). Maurice and Monica are well-off, living in a posh house in the suburbs, but things aren’t perfect there either, as we soon discover. This is a family suspended in pain by, well, secrets and lies. When Hortense enters Cynthia’s life, she triggers a series of events that allows each member of the family to confront their traumas and finally overcome the ordeals that have kept them emotionally apart for so many years.
Leigh and his actors understand the characters to the core, something that is derived from the director’s unorthodox way of creating a movie. Before the cameras begin to roll, Leigh and his actors work to develop the characters through a weeks-long collaboration where they create and dive deep via improvisation. Leigh then writes his scripts based on this period of teamwork, giving his movies a vibrant feel.
Secrets & Lies is a movie made up of numerous great sequences. We watch as Hortense works up the nerve to contact Cynthia and then as Cynthia falls to emotional pieces. Each character is incredulous that mother is white and daughter is Black, and it’s a pleasure watching Blethyn and Jean-Baptiste tiptoe around and then confront the elephant in the room. Cynthia swears she never had a tryst with a Black man, while Hortense cannot believe that her biological mother is actually a white woman.
Leigh is the master of observation, especially in his films featuring working class characters. Despite forays into historical drama, such as Topsy-Turvy (1999) and Mr. Turner (2014), Leigh will be better remembered for his rich character studies that observe the human condition in small strokes rather than heavily plot-driven fare.
Photo courtesy of the Criterion Collection
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