Nom : Lee Miller
Mother : Ellen Kuras
Date of birth : October 9, 2024
Type : theatrical release
Nationality : USA
Size : 1h57 / Weight : NC
Genre : Drama, Biopic, War
Family Booklet: Kate Winslet, Andy Samberg, Alexander Skarsgård, Marion Cotillard, Noémie Merlant, Josh O’Connor, Andrea Riseborough…
Special signs: The forgettable biopic of an unforgettable woman.
Synopsis : The life of Lee Miller, ex-Vogue model and Man Ray muse who became one of the first female war photographers. Having gone to the front and ready to do anything to bear witness to the horrors of the Second War, she, through her courage and her refusal of conventions, changed the way of seeing the world.
KATE WINSLET IS LEE MILLER
OUR OPINION ON LEE MILLER
Model, muse of surrealism, friend of Man Ray, Picasso and Paul Éluard, fashion photographer then war reporter, Lee Miller had a very rich life. Enough for a biopic to be dedicated to her, even more so today since she was also an affirmed feminist. We are in tune with the times. Born from a common desire shared by Kate Winslet and cinematographer Ellen Kuras, Lee Miller is embodied by the first and filmed by the second, for whom this is her first feature film as director. Lee Miller traces her journey from the end of the 1930s on the Côte-d’Azur to the dark hours of the Second World War where she was a correspondent for Vogue. From Saint-Malo to the Camps, via liberated Paris or Hitler’s Berlin apartment, Lee Miller is the story of a journey that captured the worst face of humanity in one lens. It is partly thanks to his unique photos that the whole world was able to understand the extent of the Nazi horror.
It begins with an elderly Lee Miller being interviewed by a young man she seems to know. She is alone at home, consumed by alcohol and drugs. In flashbacks, Lee narrates and Ellen Kuras unfolds. At best, we would say that the film is academic and artistically flat, factually aligning moments referring to iconic clichés. At worst, we will express deep embarrassment in front of a film that serves our desire for emotion like a ladleful serving of a hearty stew.
If Kate Winslet’s performance is worth highlighting, Lee Miller collapses under its smallness as an artificial and uninspired biopic. Overall, the film is certainly more or less well made at first glance, but it suffers from its intentions, its excess of didacticism, its sometimes embarrassing sensationalism, its poorly controlled flashback structure, the lack of scope of the secondary characters. (we still laugh at the furtive appearances of Marion Cotillard or Noémie Merlant), its artificiality of a fake drama, its capacity to make tons of it… Let’s move on to the minor historical arrangements (often details of place or temporality) or to the choices of what is told and/or left aside, Lee Miller is above all a too ordinary film about a figure who was not. And Ellen Kuras finishes us off with a twisty finale that pushes the limits of the grotesque. It really wasn’t necessary.
