Mike Leigh
Segreti e Bugie

"Secrets & Lies" (1996), by Mike Leigh, is a realistic family slice of life, which with the right detachment, portrays the events of an English family. Contrary to what might appear on a superficial reading, it is not a drama in its most orthodox sense, but a bittersweet comedy, which brings to the stage the suffering, passion, inner world, and pettiness of various characters.

The plot is simple. Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), a young black optometrist, after the death of her adoptive mother, seeks to know her biological mother. She will discover that it is Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn), a white, fragile, and unhappy worker, who lives in difficult conditions with her daughter Roxanne, a frustrated and aggressive twenty-year-old. After many doubts and some fears on the part of the mother, over time a real affectionate relationship forms between the two women. A garden party, organized by Cynthia's brother Maurice (Timothy Spall), a well-off photographer married to Monica, will be the occasion to give vent to the real feelings that bind the family members. Resentments thus come to the surface, tears flow, painful silences are shared, secrets are revealed, and lies hidden for years are discovered. This long sequence embodies the purifying phase, when the wall of hypocrisy is knocked down, making room for new friendships and the rediscovery of true affections.

A work very distant from expensive (often negligible) Hollywood productions. The actors worked without a script, the director only communicated the role they had in the overall unfolding of the story, allowing great freedom in the construction of the language and characterization of the characters. A perfectly successful experiment because in the past, life had rarely been staged with such realism. Leigh, by exploring the microcosm of Cynthia's family, lucidly reports on the malaise of the family in the west, making an interesting study of the "middle-class" and the English proletariat. He reveals their anxieties, sometimes scratching and sometimes amusing, creating affectionate but also cruel visits into the lives of ordinary people. It is precisely the daily struggle for the life of simple, real people that serves as the common thread in this human comedy that first seduces, then conquers, because it is above all a film about the search for love.

PS. The search for love can also be understood as "search for happiness," far removed from Muccino's film, which reduces it to an arid chase after a substantial bank account.