Secrets and Lies

Secrets and Lies, Cert. 15
Directed by Mike Leigh

Don't be fooled by the title. 'Secrets and Lies is the truest of films. The dialogue is so real, it's the kind of thing you overhear at bus stops. If you've ever stared out of the window of a moving train at people's backyards or into their living rooms and spared a few moments to wonder about their lives, then this film is for you.
This is English as she is spoken - including the cliches, the foolish repetitions and the foul language, so this film may not be for you. Maurice (Timothy Spall) is a photographer. He spends his working life framing up shots, getting his clients to smile, to fake it for the camera. Through a sequence of witty 10-second cameos, we see how the camera lies (and watch out for some famous actors).
Meanwhile, Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), following the death of her adoptive mother, sets out on a quest to find her real mother. As the film progresses, the secrets and the lies are exposed. In contrast to Maurice's camera.
Mike Leigh's camera spares us nothing. This is fly-on-the-wall, warts-and-all cinema. But there is compassion in the portrayal. You find you care about desperately lonely Cynthia (Maurice's sister, played by Brenda Blethyn), PMT Monica (Maurice's wife, Phyllis Logan) and even the sullen Roxanne. And if you've ever been on a counselling course, you'll smile at the social worker.
The climax to all these layers of painful revelations comes at Maurice's barbecue. It is agonisingly embarrassing, but truth is liberating; there is a kind of happy ending, a measure of equilibrium as we leave the protagonists in their back yard. They have settled for their meagre slice of happiness, but as the camera draws back you see the limitations of their horizons and it gives the Christian something to think about. These people are typical of the millions of people in Britain totally untouched by our churches or the gospel.
If somebody did door-to-door in such a street, he would meet largely with a blank response, I guess. These are people who have settled for much less than heaven. Yet they are all suffering from, as the film puts it, a lack of love. Their lives are as cluttered as their backyards, with a mess of disastrous relationships and all the consequential hurts and disappointments. All too aware of their failures, there are barriers even to benign intrusion from the outside. Hortense meets this barrier when she tries to get to know her mother. It is only through gentle persistence, patient acceptance and (especially) a willingness to share the pain, that Hortense finds a way in. Perhaps these are clues to the vexed question as to how the gospel can make inroads into working-class Britain. Truth and love must be the answer to secrets and lies.

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