Distributed by
VCI

Cat.no: VCLD 3607

Cert: 15

Running time: 136 minutes

Sides: 3 (CLV)

Year: 1996

Pressing: 1997

Chapters: 21 (8/9/4)

Sound: Dolby Surround

Widescreen: 1.85:1

Price: £34.99

Extras : None

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Director:

Mike Leigh (Career Girls, Naked, Life Is Sweet, High Hopes)

Cast:

Tim Spall (Life Is Sweet, Sheltering Sky, "Outside Edge" (TV), "Auf Wiedersehen Pet" (TV))
Brenda Blethyn (A River Runs Through It, Remember Me?, "Outside Edge" (TV))
Phyllis Logan (And a Nightingale Sang, Another Time Another Place, "Lovejoy" (TV))
Claire Rushbrook
Marianne Jean-Baptiste

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Following her foster mother's death, black optometrist Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) sets out from her spacious, sole-occupant Kilburn flat to find her natural mother. Meanwhile, somewhere down the Walworth Road, single white mum Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn) is having run-ins with daughter Roxanne (Claire Rushbrook) who is in turn unaware of her half-sibling's existence. Cynthia's younger brother is professional photographer Maurice (Tim Spall), whose marriage to Monica (Phyllis Logan) is currently in crisis behind the facade of the newly purchased and decorated house which is to be the venue for their housewarming-cum-Roxanne's-twenty-first-birthday-party. But when Cynthia turns up with "work-mate" Hortense in tow, the family's edifice is about to crumble along with the secrets and lies on which it has been built.

Leigh, as usual, knows how to carefully structure a script and then work with actors to improvise around it, which pays dividends. Sometimes it's very funny - check out the scene where Maurice comes home and his wife, hoovering behind the front door, gives him a hard time (not, alas, at the start of a chapter but mid-way through chapter 4). But more often, employing the actors in this way makes the characters they play all the more watchable and believable. There are a couple of lengthy single shot takes which are also highly effective - Cynthia and Hortense sharing their first cuppa in a caf (over 7 minutes, found in chapter 13, sensibly sandwiched by relevant material within the chapter) and a just under five minute one which closes chapter 18 (the family sitting around a barbecue table - this one could have had a chapter to itself, with maybe the preceding patio shot thrown in).

The final revelations in chapter 19 run for nearly fifteen minutes, but that's fair enough since it's hard to see how this sequence could legitimately have been broken up further. If the chaptering feels at times a little sparse, what's there is by and large fine. Except that, as on other VCI discs, there is no stop at the start of the movie - you have to go through the commercial for the Guardian beforehand to get to the movie in the middle of 1. Side breaks are sensible though.

The whole thing is properly presented in widescreen and looks all the better for it. The transfer of both picture (you really notice the different interiors, which on one level is what the film is all about) and sound (the gorgeous and beautifully understated string-based music score) are flawless. Even the sleeve notes on the gatefold interior are good.

In the end, as the much employed quote runs, this is indeed a great, GREAT film. You'll be equally impressed with the LD - VCI's Secrets and Lies is also a great, GREAT disc.

Film: 5/5
Picture: 5/5
Sound: 5/5

Review copyright © Jeremy Clarke, 1997.