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cin-e-rama: triptych format (three cameras, three projectors) employing a high, wide, deeply curved, three-panel screen, yielding a panorama that extended nearly to the limits of peripheral vision; introduced in 1952.
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A Well-Kept Confidence Director Mike Leigh's dark, disturbing, and relentlessly funny film tells the story of a young black British woman who goes in search of her birth-mother after her foster-mother dies. The young woman, named Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), finds, to her amazement, that her birth-mother is white. Jean-Baptiste's Hortense is brave, gentle, and sophisticated. As Cynthia, Hortense's mother, Brenda Blethyn gives a heartbreaking performance. She acts from the gut here as she portrays a sweet-hearted woman whose loneliness makes her need her long-lost daughter as much as her daughter Needs her. Timothy Spall, a bushy teddy-bear of a man, is the emotional center of this film; I liked watching him lumber thoughtfully across the screen. Leigh began this film without a script; many scenes were worked up by ad-libbing actors in intense rehearsals. This practice lends a sense of spontenaetity to the film and its performers, but the device of "the sudden revelation" becomes a bit leaden by the end of the movie. Still, the acting is confident and the direction is superb. Mike Leigh coaxed some amazing performances from this talented group of actors.
Rating (1-5): 4.5
Secrets and Lies (1996)
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