Lies and secrets
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Lies and secrets |
| Original title | Secrets & Lies |
| Country of production | Great Britain |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1996 |
| length | 142 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Mike Leigh |
| script | Mike Leigh |
| production | Simon Channing-Williams |
| music | Andrew Dickson |
| camera | Dick Pope |
| cut | Jon Gregory |
| occupation | |
| |
Lies and Secrets (also Secrets and Lies , original title: Secrets & Lies ) is a feature film by British director Mike Leigh from 1996. Leigh, who was also responsible for the script, tells the story of a young black woman in the drama the British middle class (played by Marianne Jean-Baptiste ) who are looking for their birth mother ( Brenda Blethyn ). This is a white woman from poor social backgrounds who was not even aware of the existence of a black daughter. Their unexpected appearance leads to the unearthing of more lies and secrets in the mother's family. Leigh's film has won a number of film awards, including the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival , the Golden Globe Award and the British BAFTA Award .
action
Hortense is black, 27 years old and has a well-paid position as an optician. She was adopted by her foster mother as a child. When she dies, Hortense decides to find her birth mother. Hortense's real mother is the white proletarian Cynthia. At the age of 40 she lived alone and unmarried in the run-down row house of her deceased parents on the outskirts of London and made a living as a poorly paid worker in a cardboard box factory. Cynthia has a second, white daughter named Roxanne, with whom the relationship is strained. The 20-year-old works as a street sweeper and is dissatisfied with herself and the world. This leads to constant quarrels between mother and daughter. When Roxanne falls in love with a scaffolding worker, Cynthia doesn't believe in affection and only talks about contraception.
The relationship between Cynthia and her younger brother Maurice is also strained. The wedding and portrait photographer was practically raised by his sister after the premature death of his parents. Thanks to his photo studio, he has achieved some prosperity in life and has just moved into a new house with his wife Monica. However, his wife and sister can't stand each other, which is a problem for Maurice. This has contributed to the fact that the two siblings have become estranged over the years. While the brother thinks he's always too busy, Cynthia is too proud to admit her hurt.
Hortense obtained Cynthia's address from the National Adoption Society files and contacted her for the first time by telephone. Shocked by the call, she lets Hortense talk her into a meeting. This throws Cynthia off course again when she discovers that her daughter is black. She reluctantly accepts the truth that she herself had successfully kept secret from her brother and daughter. As a 15-year-old, still a child herself, she had given birth to Hortense and given her up for adoption soon after. The skeptical reluctance is followed by a loving friendship. Cynthia is impressed by Hortense's educated and well-groomed demeanor and her professional career. She finally takes her to the family celebration for Roxanne's 21st birthday. There she introduces Hortense as a professional colleague.
However, a happy celebration in the garden of Maurice's new house with barbecue does not take place. Monica lets Cynthia feel her rejection again. Cynthia also feels taken by surprise by an expensive gift that Maurice and Monica give Roxanne. She then reveals the truth about Hortense and a scene occurs. Distraught and angry, Roxanne leaves her birthday party, but Maurice persuades her to return. He then reveals Monica and his secret - his wife cannot have children. Roxanne learns to accept Hortense as her half-sister and makes up with her mother. Cynthia again pulls herself together with her brother and donates consolation to Monica, in which the growing envy of the mother-in-law exhibited her sister-in-law had turned into hatred. Because of her own childlessness, she feels guilty towards Maurice, which had led to upset in the marriage.
History of origin
Lies and Secrets is based on an original screenplay by Mike Leigh and was funded by Channel 4 and the French production company CiBy 2000 for almost ten million German marks . This meant that the director had a budget higher than ever before in his career. The British press would later use this as an opportunity to speak of Leigh's “most accessible” film to date . For the leading roles he engaged Timothy Spall , Marianne Jean-Baptiste and the still internationally little known television actress Brenda Blethyn . Spall had already taken on a role in Leigh's film Life is Sweet in 1991 , with Jean-Baptiste the director worked on the London theater production of It's A Great Big Shame .
Although the director is also mentioned as a scriptwriter in the credits of the film, many scenes were improvised - Leigh only explained their roles to the actors and let them determine their own lines. He had prepared the cast in this way five months before filming began. "Then I was sure that everyone had internalized their characters," says Leigh. Claire Rushbrook, the actress who played Roxanne, left Leigh deliberately in the dark about the figure of the black half-sister. One of the key scenes in the film is when Cynthia realizes she is actually Hortense's mother in a shabby cafe. Leigh just let the camera run in the medium long shot - this resulted in a minute-long shot without a cut.
Reviews
Mike Leigh's film premiered on May 10, 1996 in competition at the Cannes Film Festival , where the director competed for the Palme d' Or for the second time since 1993 . "His eye and his experience as a documentarist allow Mike Leigh to come very close to a reality that his talent as a filmmaker and actor-director gives ..." , says film critic Pascal Merigeau ( Le Monde ). Leigh's protagonists would not behave like film characters, but like people of flesh and blood. The French daily acted Brenda Blethyn alongside Frances McDormand ( Fargo ), Kati Outinen ( clouds are passing by ) and Emily Watson ( Breaking the Waves ) as a co-favorite for the actor's award at the film festival. Geoff Brown ( The Times ) pointed out that the film would look unusually monochrome compared to Leigh's previous work Nackt (1993), but praised the portrayal of Timothy Spall, while Brenda Blethyn's character would come close to a caricature. "Leigh is a master at choreographing scenes of social embarrassment and he can now with a human approach he has never allowed himself to before," said Brown. Janet Maslin ( The New York Times ) described the film as much less rude and aggressive than Naked and also praised Blethyn. "The little-known Brenda Blethyn, heartbreakingly good in the role of mother, could well win an actor's award here (in Cannes)." Marianne Jean-Baptiste gave "a carefully controlled performance as a long-lost daughter" . The US industry service Hollywood Reporter called it one of the strongest films in the competition, while the French festival magazine Le film Français gave Lies and Secrets with Four Hearts its highest possible rating.
The German trade press was impressed by Leigh's authentic staging and the performance of the cast around Brenda Blethyn and Timothy Spall . Peter Hasenberg ( film-dienst ) praised lies and secrets as "an extremely intense cinema of suppressed and liberated feelings ..." and highlighted the scenes between Hortense and Cynthia and Maurice and Cynthia. “This emotional intensity is a new quality in the work of Mike Leigh ... The fact that the story does not turn into a tear-soaked" film novel of the week ", as offered by the dozen of the private TV stations, is thanks to the mastery of Leigh's directorial skills. The figures are drawn extremely precisely in the manner typical for Leigh, and present in clothing, gestures and language with a captivating authenticity, ” says Hasenberg. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung also agreed at the premiere in Cannes, which considered lies and secrets to be “the most commercially sleek” of all Leigh's works: “The birthday party in Roxanne's honor, in which everything that has become encrusted until then, is part of the reality of life in the cinema how it cannot really be staged - thanks to Leigh's method of systematically increased intensity, but also to a group of actors for whom one facial expression is sufficient to focus on the whole misery of the depicted. " Peter Buchka ( Süddeutsche Zeitung ) recognized the " Zur-Welt -come, come-up " as the main theme of the whole film. "Just as the truth only comes to light when the lies and secrets have been cleared up, the story only makes sense when the resistances of the thematic context have been removed," says Buchka. Brenda Blethyn is an "additional demonstration of the creative unity that is formed from sheer elements of absolute conflict" . “How, in the central scene with Marianne Jean-Baptiste ... with difficulty, she is preparing to accept; the way it goes back and forth between laughing and crying in a single, almost infinite camera position is not only tragic and infinitely funny at the same time, but also a showpiece of British acting, ” said Buchka.
Awards
Lies and Secrets has won 30 international film awards and has been nominated for more than a dozen others. The film won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival , where Brenda Blethyn received the award for best actress for the role of Cynthia and was able to prevail against the future American Oscar winner Frances McDormand ( Fargo ) , among others . Like the film, Blethyn won the British Film Prize (BAFTA Award) and also prevailed as Best Drama Actress at the 1997 Golden Globe Awards . The film also won the Los Angeles Film Critics Association , the Spanish Goya Film Prize, and the Independent Spirit Award . At the 1997 Academy Awards , Leigh's directorial work in the win of Anthony Minghella's literary adaptation, The English Patient, didn't get past his five nominations.
Academy Awards 1997
Nominated in the categories
- Best movie
- Best director
- Best original script
- Best Actress (Brenda Blethyn)
- Best Supporting Actress (Marianne Jean-Baptiste)
BAFTA Award 1997
- Best British Film
- Best Actress (Brenda Blethyn)
- Best original script
Nominated in the categories
- Best movie
- Best director
- Best Actor (Timothy Spall)
- Best Supporting Actress (Marianne Jean-Baptiste)
Golden Globe Awards 1997
- Best Actress - Drama (Brenda Blethyn)
Nominated in the categories
- Best film - drama
- Best Supporting Actress (Marianne Jean-Baptiste)
Further
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Asociación de Críticos Cinematográficos de Argentina 1998
Australian Film Institute 1997
Boston Society of Film Critics 1996
Camerimage 1996
International Cannes Film Festival 1996
Chlotrudis Awards 1997 Nominated in the categories
César 1997
Directors Guild of America 1997
Empire Awards 1997
European film award 1996
Fotogramas de Plata 1997
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Humanitas Prize 1997
Independent Spirit Awards 1997
Kinema Jumpō Prize 1998
London Critics' Circle Film Awards 1997
Nominated in the category
Los Angeles Film Critics Association 1996
Premio Sant Jordi 1997
Satellite Awards 1997 Nominated in the categories
Screen Actors Guild Awards 1997
Sindacato Nazionale Giornalisti Cinematografici Italiani 1997
Syndicat Français de la Critique de Cinéma 1997
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The British Film Institute voted Lies and Secrets # 40 in 1999 for Best British Films of All Time .
literature
Primary literature
- Mike Leigh: Secrets and lies . Faber and Faber, London and Boston 1997, ISBN 978-0-571-19291-5 .
Secondary literature
- Raymond Carney, Leonard Quart: The films of Mike Leigh: embracing the world . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York 2000, ISBN 978-0-521-48518-0 .
- Alan Lovell, Peter Krämer: Screen acting . Routledge, New York and London 1999, ISBN 978-0-415-18294-2
- Edward Trostle Jones: All or nothing: the cinema of Mike Leigh . P. Lang, New York 2004, ISBN 978-0-8204-6745-0 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ cf. Niroumand, Mariam: workers in aspic . In: the daily newspaper , September 13, 1996, p. 14
- ↑ a b cf. Associated Press Worldstream message from Matt Wolf, May 11, 1996, 11:55 am Eastern Time, Cannes
- ↑ a b cf. Maslin, Janet: Critic's Notebook: At Cannes, Intensity And Auteur Worship . In: The New York Times, May 14, 1996, p. 13
- ↑ cf. Gepp, Uwe: cinema / film: close-up; English realism instead of Hollywood illusion factory . Associated Press Worldstream - German, September 8, 1996, 8:05 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, Frankfurt / M.
- ↑ cf. Secrets et mensonges: Mike Leigh . In: Le Monde, May 13, 1996, p. 1
- ↑ cf. Merigeau, Pascal: Un grand cri d'amour dans une société à la dérive . In: Le Monde, May 13, 1996, Culture
- ↑ cf. Bousculade pour la meilleure interprétation féminine . In: Le Monde, May 21, 1996, Culture
- ↑ cf. Brown, Geoff: Life is sweet when it's not naked . In: The Times, May 23, 1996
- ↑ cf. Review by Peter Hasenberg in film-dienst 19/1996 (accessed on August 29, 2009 via Munzinger Online)
- ↑ cf. Bravo extraordinary . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, May 13, 1996, p. 35
- ↑ cf. Buchka, Peter: Disasters and fortunes . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung, September 12, 1996, No. 211, p. 19
Web links
- Secrets and Lies in the All Movie Guide (English)
- Secrets and Lies in theInternet Movie Database(English)
- Secrets and Lies atRotten Tomatoes(English)
- Lies and secrets in the German dubbing files