Written by Andreas Babiolakis

This review is a part of the Palme d’Or Project: a review of every single Palme d’Or winner at Cannes Film Festival. Secrets & Lies won the forty first Palme d’Or at the 1996 festival.

The film was selected by the following jury.
Jury President: Francis Ford Coppola.
Jury: Nathalie Baye, Greta Scacchi, Michael Balhaus, Henry Chapier, Atom Egoyan, Eiko Ishioka, Krzysztof Piesiewicz, Antonio Tabucchi, Anh Hung Tran.

Mike Leigh is the author for the everyday people of the United Kingdom, who is able to recognize all of the lovely (or unique) elements that render us human. He can take the simplest of premises and get something golden out of it: as if we are witnessing the most profound character study. Case in point: his greatest work to date is Secrets & Lies, and it's only about the kinds of domestic deceptions that so many other dramatists zero-in on. Yet with Leigh's guidance, this becomes a fixation that we cannot turn away from, and that's due to the director's ability to blend theatre levels of intimacy with enough reality that we aren't sure if we are watching actual conversations or a really good play on the big screen. There are so many other Leigh films that I love (Happy-Go-Lucky, Naked, All or Nothing), but Secrets & Lies is impossibly superb in every single way.

So, picture this: the Purley family is dysfunctional and accustomed to keeping hidden truths from one another. The foundation of Leigh's screenplay is there, but he actually had more of a hands-off approach as a writer here (unlike the calculated, intricate verbal-diarrhea that David Thewlis had to memorize and untangle in Naked). Leigh had his performers improvise between plot points: they knew where they were going, but getting there was a mystery. This made for more natural confrontations: the stumbling over words, the fight to get extra jabs in, and the kind of miasma you can't just fake. Furthermore, Leigh withheld each character's personal secret from other performers, so the revelations would hit as hard as they needed to. A lot of what you see is in the moment and unreleased, and this is a huge testament to how Leigh is able to frame and document the energy of great performances. All he had to do was sit back.

This is a two way street, and part of why Secrets & Lies is so good is because of the performers entrusted to do such heavy lifting. You have some Leigh veterans like Timothy Spall and Lesley Manville, as well as great performances from all involved, but the film is Brenda Blethyn's through and through (possibly even more than Leigh's). As a mother torn apart from revelation to revelation named Cynthia Purley, Blethyn is such a complicated soul whose only certainty is that she carries her heart on her sleeve for the world to see. Other films have a counter for how much they swear. I wouldn't be surprised if Blethyn broke records for how many times she refers to people as "sweetheart" or "darling". She is achingly kind, but seeing her deal with her own imperfections and the judgement of others is so tough to watch. Blethyn doesn't even have to carry the film given the talent around her, but she does her best to anyway like a sacrifice.

Cynthia is the head of the Purley family, particularly her numerous children. Secrets & Lies actually starts off with one of its biggest discoveries: that Cynthia has a daughter she doesn't remember that she gave up for adoption. Hortense Cumberbatch (played magnificently by the underrated Marianne Jean-Baptiste) has lost both of her adoptive parents and is now retracing her biological roots, only to find Cynthia and not any potential father figure. She is African-British, so she and Cynthia don't even believe thay they are related when they finally confront each other. You'd think that this is the biggest card that Leigh has to play, but, oh, you'd be wrong. Of course, everything comes out during the iconic celebration where tempers flare and nothing is left out (and I do mean nothing). Before it is a determinedly hostile environment, Cynthia thinks this is the appropriate time to reveal to the rest of her family that they have a long lost sibling. And in a way it is the best time, because hanging onto secrets will only ever make things worse.

And Secrets & Lies isn't about investing time into the drama of others. It's about cleansing, and that is the final cherry on top of Leigh's masterwork. We never judge the Purley family for what they're going through. We wish them to heal and become whole again. That's what this whole process is all about, and I can tell you that it's a whole lot more optimistic and real about the dynamics and elasticities of the family unit than so many safe films that preach to be about family (maybe in a nuclear sense). The conclusion is an eventual euphoria: a release of pent up resentment particularly after so many vulnerable quarrels. Once we get through the bad stuff (and there is a lot of bad stuff), we find the joy that the entire Purley family is deserving of. Like I said, Mike Leigh makes films about everyday people (typically) for everyday people, and Secrets & Lies is a cathartic, pure film that I'm sure everyone can identify with at some point. If you are harbouring onto your own secrets and can't divulge them, then perhaps watching this film will help you feel heard without actually revealing what you're holding on to. We also learn that life is too short during Secrets & Lies, and Leigh isn't going to lie and pretend that everything's going to be okay. The Purleys shall heal, but they will also persevere past what comes next. Despite being a story full of untruths, Leigh will never deceive his audience.

Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Toronto Metropolitan University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.