British filmmaker Mike Leigh has a reputation as a curmudgeon. But his films reveal a keen interest in ordinary people, and of course so do his methods (which involve intensive workshopping with his actors). This is complicated by his predisposition for mockery. His inclines to comedy, and often trucks in caricature. What makes his work fascinating is how caricature does not preculde compassion.
Secrets & Lies won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1996, and also the Best Actress award for Brenda Blethyn. She plays Cynthia, a sad, anxious middle-aged working class white woman who is contacted out of the blue by Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), the baby she gave up for adoption 27 years earlier. But Hortense is Black. Surely there has been some mistake? While Leigh mines the colour issue for gentle comedy of manners, the film’s real interest is in Cynthia’s domestic and family life, which Hortense’s arrival allows her to see with new, cruel clarity (Hortense is an optometrist, after all). It’s an emotional work out, this film. Bring tissues.
Staff Pick: Savannah
A film of extraordinary emotional riches. Spellbinding.
Geoff Andrew, Time Out
Media Partner
Mike Leigh
Brenda Blethyn, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Timothy Spall, Claire Rushbrook, Phylis Logan
UK
1996
English
Palme d’Or & Best Actress (Brenda Blethyn), Cannes
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Credits
Producer
Simon Channing-Williams
Screenwriter
Mike Leigh
Cinematography
Dick Pope
Editor
Jon Gregory
Original Music
Andrew Dickson
Production Design
Alison Chitty
90s, Baby!
Ten years. 11 weeks. 90 films from the 1990s. This summer, 90’s Baby! takes a deep dive into a defining decade of cinema.
Casino
Revisiting the wise guy milieu for the third (but not the final) time, Scorsese tells the story of Ace Rothstein and Nicky Santoro (Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci), two New York hoodlums who become major players in the history of Las Vegas.
Ghost in the Shell
This seminal anime which inspired James Cameron and the Wachowskis, anticipates how AI technology encroaches on the human domain in ways we can scarcely comprehend. "A work of profound and melancholic beauty." Daily Telegraph
La Haine
This angry French thriller about alienated kids (a skinhead, an Arab, and an African) in the working class outskirts of Paris plays like a cross between Do the Right Thing and Mean Streets. French cops turned their backs on the red carpet at Cannes.
Crash
Sex drive, David Cronenberg-style. The car-crash fetishists who orbit Cronenberg's metrosexual Toronto (they include James Spader, Holly Hunter, and Deborah Unger) obsessively seek a fusion of metal and flesh... Fender bender as the ultimate orgasm.
Trainspotting
Danny Boyle's blistering movie was a sensation in 1996: a kick in the teeth of old school British kitchen sink realism, it fearlessly transformed the dire circumstances of Edinburgh heroin addicts into an experience by turns exhilarating and devastating.
Fargo
Have the Coen brothers ever made a more satisfying movie than Fargo? This grisly comedy pits one of cinema's most pure-hearted cops (Frances McDormand's pregnant cop, Marge Gunderson) against the machinations of weak and mercenary men.
Lone Star
John Sayles's modern day Western is a murder mystery which draws sheriff Chris Cooper to investigate two of his predecessors, the notoriously corrupt Charlie Wade (Kris Kristofferson), and his own father, Buddy (Matthew McConaughey).
90s Mystery Movie + Trivia Night
And now for a shot in the dark... We're not announcing the Mystery Movie in advance, so you'll have to take a leap of faith. We can say it was released between January 1990 and January 2000, and it's not already showing elsewhere in this series. As an added enticement we're going to throw in a 90s movie trivia night with your ticket — plus prizes!
Princess Mononoke
A mystical fight between humans and the Animal Gods of the forest. Ashitaka, the last prince of a dying race, struggles to find a way for both sides to co-exist. But the fighting only becomes more and more bloody and all hope seems to be lost…
Gummo
Harmony Korine was just 24 when he made Gummo. It's become a cult favourite as much for its singularity as anything else: it's a strange, misshapen beast, a slice of beat poetry translated into experimental film.
Jackie Brown
Take half a dozen characters who know they're in a fix, and give them half a million dollars to fight over. Tarantino's crime movie (his best) transcends genre in large part because in Pam Grier and Robert Forster it gives us people we truly care about.
The Big Lebowski
The Coens' whacky, warped slacker generation riff on Raymond Chandler, a shaggy dog story which delights in going sideways at every turn. Jeff Bridges is the Dude, and what he really wants is to get his rug back...