'LEE' REVIEW: Vive La France et L'Art, or... Something [2/5]
Good Idea, Poor Execution
[Rating 2/5] - dir. Ellen Kuras - 2024 - United Kingdom - R - 1h 57m - Historical Drama
It’s difficult to tell if the film is self-important, or if it’s doing justice to self-important people with highfalutin thoughts. Either way, it was a tough watch for this reviewer.
Lee Miller, a (real) famed model-turned-wartime photographer tells her life story to a budding journalist looking for a scoop. We bounce between their conversation and her memories brought to life. This is the films’s format, for better and worse.
Characters seem to have all the right answers in the form of semi-charming long-winded dialogue. Conversations have the kind of wordiness your most pretentious friend would call “sparring”.
The cinematography is typically beautiful (Southern France will always look like a dream).
This is not the kind of film for which Winslet will be remembered - nor Skarsgård, nor Samberg, nor O’Connor, nor Cotillard.
All are capable of and have done better. Lee Miller deserves better.
Fans of historical dramas will like it well enough, but that doesn’t mean it’s good. If a look at what war does to the journalists covering it, Civil War (Dir. Alex Garland, 2024) does a better, truer job, and it uses a fictional conflict. If you want a biopic with more juice, well, there are troves.
Best Line: “This happened. These things happened.”
[Rating 2/5] - dir. Ellen Kuras - 2024 - United Kingdom - R - 1h 57m - Historical Drama
It's been a few weeks since I watched this and I am still mulling over why it wasn't as powerful as it should have been. I think it lacked some focus on the transition of Lee Miller model/muse to war photographer (it's a real life transformation).