We first met Hortense Cumberbatch, the soft-spoken optome trist at the heart of Mike Leigh’s wonderful 1996 film, “Secrets & Lies,” at a funeral. The camera paid her little mind. Dwarfed by a crowd of mourners in a cemetery, her head bowed as she murmured along to “How Great Thou Art,” Hortense, played with crystalline restraint by Marianne Jean-Baptiste, didn’t give much indication of being a main character. It’s possible that Jean-Baptiste, a Black British stage actor and musician with only a handful of small film roles to her name, didn’t know it yet herself. One of the curious effects of Leigh’s famously unorthodox working methods—in which the shape of a story and the nature of its characters are discovered, and perfected, through an often months-long process of acting workshops and rehearsals—is that the performers themselves seldom know beforehand whether they’re playing a lead or a supporting role.
Michele Austin and Marianne Jean-Baptiste star in Mike Leigh’s film.
Leigh’s approach, dogged in its pursuit of emotional truth, is meant to frustrate such narrative hierarchies to begin with. His dramas, among them the TV movie “Meantime” (1983) and cinematic features such as “Naked” (1993), “TopsyTurvy” (1999), and “Vera Drake” (2004), remind us that no one is a supporting player in their own life—a truth made especially plain in “Secrets & Lies,” which is predicated on shock revelations and hidden identities. Hortense, having lost both her adoptive parents, set out to track down her biological mother—only to learn that she had been born to a white woman, Cynthia Purley (Brenda Blethyn). As years’ worth of disclosures and recriminations erupted into the open, the serene Jean-Baptiste held us close and rapt. At the climax, amid a flood of family histrionics, our eyes sought out Hortense, sitting on the sidelines, stricken with remorseful silence.
Esta historia es de la edición January 13, 2025 de The New Yorker.
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Esta historia es de la edición January 13, 2025 de The New Yorker.
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THE ST. ALWYNN GIRLS AT SEA SHEILA HETI
There was a general sadness that day on the ship. Dani was walking listlessly from cabin to cabin, delivering little paper flyers announcing the talent show at the end of the month. She had made them the previous week; then had come news that the boys' ship would not be attending. It almost wasn't worth handing out flyers at all—almost as if the show had been cancelled. The boys' ship had changed course; it was now going to be near Gibraltar on the night of the performance—nowhere near where their ship would be, in the middle of the North Atlantic sea. Every girl in school had already heard Dani sing and knew that her voice was strong and good. The important thing was for Sebastien to know. Now Sebastien would never know, and it might be months before she would see him again—if she ever would see him again. All she had to look forward to now were his letters, and they were only delivered once a week, and no matter how closely Dani examined them, she could never have perfect confidence that he loved her, because of all his mentions of a girlfriend back home.
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