LEE Trailer 2 (2024) Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard

LEE Trailer 2 (2024) Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard

LEE Trailer 2 (NEW 2024) Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, Josh O'Connor, Andy Samberg, Lee Miller Biopic
© 2024 - RoadsideFlix
"You have secrets. Many... that you'll never share." Roadside has revealed another trailer for Lee, a biopic movie about the famed war photographer Lee Miller starring Kate Winslet as Lee. It's set for a release later in September - which is why they're giving it a big marketing push now. This first premiered at the 2023 Toronto Film Festival last year, and also played at AFI Fest. The story begins in the South of France, 1938, where Lee Miller is vacationing with a few of her closest friends who are artists, poets, confidants. She was a fashion model who became an acclaimed war correspondent for Vogue magazine during WWII. Her singular talent & unbridled tenacity resulted in some of the 20th century's most indelible images of war, including an iconic photo of Miller herself, posing defiantly in Hitler's private bathtub. It stars Alexander Skarsgård, Andrea Riseborough, Marion Cotillard, Josh O'Connor, Noémie Merlant, Samuel Barnett, and Andy Samberg as her photographer friend David E. Scherman who joined her on the front. "Lee lived her life at full throttle, for which she paid a huge emotional price." This trailer finally features the iconic "Hitler's bathtub" scene in it, which is one of her most famous photos from the war. Get a look below.

Here's the second official trailer for Ellen Kuras' biopic movie Lee, direct from Roadside's YouTube:

Lee Kate Winslet Movie

You can watch the first teaser trailer for Ellen Kuras' Lee right here, and the other official trailer here.

Lee, the directorial feature from award-winning cinematographer Ellen Kuras, portrays a pivotal decade in the life of American war correspondent and war photographer Lee Miller (played by Kate Winslett). Miller's singular talent and unbridled tenacity resulted in some of the 20th century's most indelible images of war, including an iconic photo of Miller herself, posing defiantly in Hitler's private bathtub. Lee Miller had a profound understanding and empathy for women and for the voiceless victims of war. Her images display both the fragility and ferocity of the human experience. Above all, the film shows how Miller lived her life at full-throttle in pursuit of truth, for which she paid a huge personal price, forcing her to confront a traumatic & deeply buried secret from her childhood. Lee is directed by the American cinematographer / filmmaker Ellen Kuras, making her feature directorial debut after directing for TV, including episodes of "The Umbrella Academy" and "Inventing Anna". The screenplay is written by Liz Hannah and Marion Hume & John Collee; from a story by Lem Dobbs and Marion Hume & John Collee. Adapted from the biography "The Lives of Lee Miller" by Antony Penrose. This initially premiered at the 2023 Toronto Film Festival last fall. Roadside will debut Lee in select US theaters starting September 27th, 2024. Who wants to watch?
Even as bombs and bullets fly around her, Kate Winslet also has to battle sexism among Second World War correspondents in the latest trailer for Lee.

In Ellen Kuras’ biopic for Sky, Winslet portrays real-life American war correspondent Lee Miller.

“I just want to do my part. Why should the men get to decide what this is?,” Winslet, wanting to document Nazi atrocities, asks her Vogue editor (Andrea Riseborough) early on in the trailer.

Surmounting the odds arrayed against women looking to work on the front lines as war correspondents, Lee did get to the capture key wartime images for British Vogue, including the destruction caused by the Blitz and the aftermath of D-Day. But Lee paid a personal price to witness brutal warfare firsthand as an accredited U.S. journalist.

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Lee Trailer
“Even when I wanted to look away, I knew I couldn’t,” Winslet’s character says at one point as grisly war images are etched all over her wary face. Her voice is from 1977 when an older Lee is recounting her fearless wartime career to Tony, a young journalist played by Josh O’Connor, through flashbacks.

The latest trailer also has Andy Samberg playing Life Magazine photographer David E. Scherman, Alexander Skarsgård as the English Surrealist painter and photographer Roland Penrose, and Marion Cotillard playing Solange D’Ayen, the fashion director of French Vogue and a friend of Lee.

The Sky Original film will debut in British and Irish cinemas on Sept. 13, 2024

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Lee is a 2023 British biographical drama film directed by Ellen Kuras in her feature directorial debut, from a screenplay by Liz Hannah, John Collee and Marion Hume, and story from Hume, Collee and Lem Dobbs, adapted from the 1985 biography The Lives of Lee Miller by Antony Penrose.

It stars Kate Winslet as WWII journalist Lee Miller. The cast includes Marion Cotillard, Andrea Riseborough, Andy Samberg, Noémie Merlant, Josh O'Connor and Alexander Skarsgård in supporting roles.

The movie took eight years to make and, at one point, due to precarious funding, Kate Winslet (who also produced the movie) paid the entire cast and crew's salaries for two weeks. The film made its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on 9 September 2023. It was released theatrically in the United Kingdom by Sky Cinema on 13 September 2024.

Premise
Lee Miller goes from a career as a model to enlisting as a photographer to chronicle the events of World War II for Vogue magazine.

Cast
Kate Winslet as Lee Miller
Marion Cotillard as Solange d'Ayen
Andrea Riseborough as Audrey Withers
Andy Samberg as David Scherman
Noémie Merlant as Nusch Éluard
Josh O'Connor as Antony Penrose
Alexander Skarsgård as Roland Penrose
Arinzé Kene as Major Jonesy
Vincent Colombe as Paul Éluard
Patrick Mille as Jean D'Ayen
Samuel Barnett as Cecil Beaton
Zita Hanrot as Ady Fidelin
James Murray as Colonel Spencer
Production
Development
The project originated when cinematographer Ellen Kuras was at a bookshop in New York and spotted a tome about war photographer Lee Miller.[5][6] Kuras noticed a similarity between Miller and actress Kate Winslet–with whom she had worked in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)–and sent Winslet a copy of the book and kept another copy for herself.[6] Years later, Winslet started developing a movie project about Miller and asked Kuras whether she would like to direct it.[5]

The project was officially announced in October 2015, with Winslet attached to star as Miller.[7] In June 2020, cinematographer Ellen Kuras was set to direct the film–her feature directorial debut,[8] with Liz Hannah adapting the screenplay from the 1985 biography The Lives of Lee Miller, written by Miller's son, Antony Penrose,[9] who supported the film and gave Kuras full access to his mother's personal archives, diaries,[9] and even her unpublished work.[6] The screenplay went through several rewrites.[10] It was originally written by John Collee and Marion Hume from a story they developed together with Lem Dobbs, with Liz Hannah joining on later.[6] Winslet also served as a producer on the film.[1] She chose the screenwriters and was also in charge of finances and casting, even personally calling her co-stars.[10]

The most significant development in the film came in October 2021, when Marion Cotillard, Jude Law, Andrea Riseborough and Josh O'Connor joined the cast, with a crew including Alexandre Desplat as a composer, Michael O'Connor as costume designer, cinematographer Paweł Edelman and Ivana Primorac as head makeup and hair artist.[11] In February 2022, Andy Samberg was announced as being part of the cast.[12] He would be confirmed in October 2022 alongside additional castings including Alexander Skarsgård, who replaced Law in the role of Roland Penrose.[1] Winslet wrote a letter to Cotillard asking her to play French Vogue editor Solange d'Ayen in the film.[13] Winslet and Cotillard had previously co-starred in Contagion (2011).[14]

Winslet said she was patronized by male executives when she was trying to get funding for the film. "The men who think you want and need their help are unbelievably outraging. I've even had a director say to me: 'Listen, you do my film and I'll get your little Lee funded...' Little! Or we'd have potential male investors saying things like: Tell me, why am I supposed to like this woman?", Winslet told Vogue. During pre-production, Winslet covered two weeks of wages with her own money due to insufficient funds.[10]

Filming
Filming began in late September 2022 in Croatia.[15] Production paused for a short period that month when Winslet slipped during filming and was taken to the hospital.[16] The accident happened on the first day of shooting, when Winslet slipped and injured her back while she was rehearsing a sequence where Lee Miller was running down the street in Saint-Malo under bombardment. Winslet decided to keep filming despite her back injury and barely being able to stand up.[10]

Filming also took place in Hungary and wrapped in early December 2022.[17]

Release
Lee had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on 9 September 2023.[3] It was released theatrically by Sky Cinema[18] in the United Kingdom and Ireland on 13 September 2024.[19] In February 2024, Roadside Attractions and Vertical acquired US distribution rights to the film, originally scheduling the film for a theatrical release on 20 September 2024.[20] The film's release was subsequently delayed by a week to 27 September.[21]

Reception
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 65% of 37 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.20/10. The website's consensus reads: "Kate Winslet's gripping performance in the title role helps elevate Lee beyond its disappointingly conventional biopic trappings."[22] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 59 out of 100, based on 11 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.[23]
News›Movies
Academy Award Winner Kate Winslet Talks Dramatic True Story 'Lee'
Moviefone speaks with Oscar-winner Kate Winslet about new biopic 'Lee'. "I knew who Lee Miller was, but I did not know how unbelievably determined she was."

Jami Philbrick
September 24, 2024 - 9 min read
Kate Winslet stars in 'Lee'.
Kate Winslet stars in 'Lee'.

Opening in theaters on September 27th is the new biopic ‘Lee’, which chronicles the life of celebrated WWII photojournalist Lee Miller.

Directed by cinematographer Ellen Kuras (‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’), the film stars Academy Award winner Kate Winslet (‘Titanic’, ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’) as Miller, as well as Oscar-winner Marion Cotillard (‘The Dark Knight Rises’), Oscar-nominee Andrea Riseborough (‘To Leslie’), Andy Samberg (‘Palm Springs’), Josh O’Connor (‘Challengers’), and Alexander Skarsgård (‘The Northman’).

Moviefone recently had the pleasure of speaking with Kate Winslet about her work on ‘Lee’, her passion to get the movie made and tell this story, as well as Miller’s incredible determination and what Winslet admires most about her.

Related Article: Director James Cameron and Kate Winslet Talk 'Avatar: The Way of Water'
Kate Winslet 'Lee'. Photo: Roadside Attractions & Vertical.
Kate Winslet 'Lee'. Photo: Roadside Attractions & Vertical.

Moviefone: To begin with, as both an actress and a producer, why you were so passionate about this project and why did you want to get Lee's story told?

Kate Winslet: I started developing the film in 2015, and I knew who Lee Miller was, I was familiar with her photography. But I did not know what she had gone through and how unbelievably determined she was to get permission to go to the front line and to document the war and the atrocities of the Nazi regime for female readers of British Vogue. I could see very clearly that history was in danger of pigeonholing her and defining her through the male gaze. She was described as the former muse and ex-lover of Man Ray, and she was an ex-cover girl, all this former stuff, like the interesting bits of her life had been and gone. But these kind of infantilizing descriptions of who she was, which really bothered me because Lee was a woman who lived many lives within her life, even beyond the war. But for me, this decade of history that we depict in our film was really when Lee became Lee. This was a flawed, middle-aged woman who had the compassion and determination to go and reveal the truth. She wasn't prepared to take no for an answer. She never took her foot off the gas, and I just had to become like that in trying to get the film made, and in playing her. It has been just an extraordinary privilege to have played this character, honestly.
(L to R) Andy Samberg and Kate Winslet in 'Lee'. Photo: Kimberley French.
(L to R) Andy Samberg and Kate Winslet in 'Lee'. Photo: Kimberley French.

MF: Finally, you mentioned Lee’s incredible determination, where do you think that came from and is that what you admired most about her?

KW: I mean, yes, it was one of many things that I admired about her, but in general, how Lee Miller walked through the world. I think she was born determined, and she carried herself with incredible grace and compassion. She was redefining femininity 80 years ago to mean resilience, strength, courage and power, all those things that we now as women are doing and we're raising our daughters that way, and that's how we are in our friendships. That was Lee. She was already doing that, so (she was an) incredibly contemporary person of her time. But Lee had suffered the most extraordinary, unimaginable trauma as a child, and she was told to never speak of it, and she didn't. She never told anyone. Consequently, she had a very powerful streak of injustice in her, and that meant whether it was, consciously or subconsciously, that she carried that injustice into her work and had a way of seeing the world that was different. She could see evil. She could see people in a way that meant her photography was unique. She was able to look down into that Rolleiflex camera at her image, but look up and meet people's gaze head on, and she was unafraid of doing that. That is what sets her work apart, and that is what war correspondents do. They take risks and they put themselves in terrifying situations, but they do it because they want to reveal the truth, and they want to make sure that nothing is hidden. Lee did that for the female readers of British Vogue at a time when not many other women were doing that at all.
Lee
Lee
"Some wounds you cannot see."
R1 hr 57 minSep 27th, 2024
Showtimes & Tickets
Miller had a profound understanding and empathy for women and the voiceless victims of war. Her images display both the fragility and ferocity of the human experience.... Read the Plot

What is the plot of ‘Lee’?
Lee Miller (Kate Winslet) goes from a career as a model to enlisting as a photographer to chronicle the events of World War II for Vogue magazine.

Who is in the cast of ‘Lee’?
Kate Winslet as Lee Miller
Marion Cotillard as Solange d'Ayen
Andrea Riseborough as Audrey Withers
Andy Samberg as David Scherman
Noémie Merlant as Nusch Éluard
Josh O'Connor as Antony Penrose
Alexander Skarsgård as Roland Penrose
(L to R) Noemie Merlant, Marion Cotillard, Kate Winslet, and Alexander Skarsgard in 'Lee'. Photo: Kimberley French.
(L to R) Noemie Merlant, Marion Cotillard, Kate Winslet, and Alexander Skarsgard in 'Lee'. Photo: Kimberley French.

Kate Winslet Movies and TV Shows:
'Heavenly Creatures' (1994)
‘Sense and Sensibility' (1995)
'Titanic' (1997)
'The Life of David Gale' (2003)
'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' (2004)
'Finding Neverland' (2004)
'All the Kings Men' (2006)
'Little Children' (2006)
'Flushed Away' (2006)
'The Holiday' (2006)
'The Reader' (2008)
'Revolutionary Road' (2008)
'Contagion' (2011)
'Mildred Pierce' (2011)
'Labor Day' (2013)
'Divergent' (2014)
'Insurgent' (2015)
'Steve Jobs' (2015)
'Triple 9' (2016)
'Collateral Beauty' (2016)
'The Mountain Between Us' (2017)
'Mare of Easttown' (2021)
'Avatar: The Way of Water' (2022)
'The Regime' (2024)
Too many people have never heard of Lee Miller. In the past decade or so, the model turned war photographer began to get a moment in the sun, but it has taken until now for a biopic to come together. Now, we have one in Lee and it’s a throwback film, for better and worse. It’s elegant and stacked with strong actors, but with a sense of eating your vegetables that other biopics have been able to shake of late. The good outweighs the bad, but it’s close.

Lee lives and dies with its lead performance. Watching Miller come to life through Kate Winslet, who also produces and truly shepherded this story into existence, is actually very compelling. She’s too good an actress not to ace this role, and she’s incredibly invested, but the overall project struggles to match her sense of urgency.

Roadside Attractions
This is the story of Lee Miller (Winslet), a fashion model who would go on to become a noted war photographer. Framed in flashbacks through an interview the older Miller is doing with journalist Antony Penrose (Josh O’Connor), we see her evolution. This 1977 conversation between the two takes us back to the key moments that moved her from a passive life to one fueled by trauma and a drive to do some good.

In 1938, Miller couldn’t have a care in the world. Spending time with the likes of Solange D’Ayen (Marion Cotillard) and Roland Penrose (Alexander Skarsgård), she’s aware that World War II looms, but life is good. Then, the war hits home, leading Miller to want to make a difference. So, she begins taking photographs for Vogue, under the eye of editor Audrey Withers (Andrea Riseborough). Eventually, she moves to the front lines, becoming an accredited American journalist, befriending LIFE photographer David E. Scherman (Andy Samberg) in the process. The photos she’d take would go on to stand the test of time.

Roadside Attractions
Kate Winslet is the reason to see this flick. She’s wanted to get this done for years, so when it came time to shoot, she was more than ready. There’s energy and intensity from the actress, matching a lot of what she’s been able to accomplish in the past. Winslet is in top form, plain and simple. The cast around her is solid, but despite the talents of Marion Cotillard, Josh O’Connor, Andrea Riseborough, and Alexander Skarsgård, they all feel more like cameos. Winslet is who feels essential in Lee. Other supporting players here include Noémie Merlant, James Murray, and more, but Winslet is the star.

Cinematographer turned director Ellen Kuras mounts this film fairly efficiently, if without too much overt passion. The screenplay by Liz Hannah, Marion Hume, and John Collee goes through the biopic motions, giving Winslet plenty to do, but often feeling like it’s just checking boxes. It does feel like without this central performance, Lee would come up short.
Lee ending spoilers follow

Lee Miller lived the kind of epic life that can't be contained in a two-hour movie, but Kate Winslet's Lee manages to capture some of her greatness.

The model-turned-photographer defied rules and expectations to report on World War II from the battlefield, living through the liberation of Paris and becoming one of the first journalists to explore the horrors of concentration camps, including Dachau. In one of her most memorable photographs, she even posed naked in Adolf Hitler’s personal bathtub.

Miller's existence feels larger than life, but the movie aims to ground her and offer more intimate aspects of her life, too.

One aspect of her life, however, is hidden in plain sight through omission and misdirection, and it's ultimately used as a strange plot twist at the end of the movie.

kate winslet as lee miller, lee
Kimberley French//Sky
Related: The best and most anticipated movies of 2024

After returning from a war-torn Europe and reuniting with her second husband Roland Penrose (played by Alexander Skarsgard), she gave birth to a son in 1947.

Following Miller's death in 1977, Antony would be the one to find over 60,000 negatives and old manuscripts stored in her attic and offer them to the world to admire, later writing Miller's 1988 biography The Lives of Lee Miller.

In the movie, Antony is played (secretly, at first) by Josh O’Connor, who we thought was just a common journalist interviewing Miller.

As it turns out, the interview is fictional. It represents how Antony rediscovered his mother's life through the lost treasures he found, putting the pieces of her amazing story together and reframing his image of her.

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Penrose admits in an interview with The Independent that before that moment, he only "knew her as a useless drunk for whom catching a train in Lewes was a major, major drama".

In the same interview, Miller's granddaughter, Ami Bouhassane, said of sorting through her photographs: "It was like doing this giant jigsaw puzzle – it took 10 years to even make sense of it all".

marion cotillard as solange d'ayen, kate winslet as lee miller, lee
Kimberley French//Sky
Related: Andy Samberg reveals "hesitation" over unexpected role in Lee

It's a beautiful concept for a story – a son mending his relationship with his mother after her death through the legacy and secrets she left behind. A rediscovery through a mosaic of pictures, stories and mementos from a life he never fully knew about, and the traumas that haunted her until her last day. They could have used it from the start.

However, the movie doesn't commit to this angle, and the writers' decision to use it instead as a final plot twist leaves a sour taste. In fact, there seems to be some wilful misdirection early in the movie when Lee Miller says she doesn't see herself having kids.

Why hide Miller's motherhood until the very end, making it an important and emotional plot point, without further explanation of what was that really like for her?

In the ending, when it's revealed that O'Connor's character is Antony Penrose, the story brings back Miller so she can apologise for not being the best mother she could have been. Viewers are left to understand that her old self's snappy attitude and drinking problem are all she was reduced to after the war, which, apparently, led her to be a deficient parent.

It's an incomplete, perhaps even unfair, portrayal of Miller's mental health struggles, PTSD and postnatal depression in the years following the war and Antony's birth.

As her granddaughter told The Independent: "That's the Lee Miller he [Antony] knew. And then the later Lee Miller, who managed to live with depression and reinvented herself and died actually celebrated as a celebrity cook."

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Yes, the photographer changed professions again later in life, with cooking becoming her personal therapy.

kate winslet as olderlee miller, lee teaser trailer
Sky
Related: Sky Cinema movie premieres in September 2024

The ending doesn't mention any of this. Instead, it just ends with a mother-son's afterlife reconciliation that doesn't make much sense after the kind of biopic we just watched. It's not that a biopic has to include every aspect of a person's story, but it does have to be consistent.

Beyond its cheap final reveal, the inability to choose an angle is Lee's biggest problem.

Maybe the writers realised that sticking with Antony's perspective wouldn't be the best option, since it would have meant telling the story of Lee Miller – a groundbreaking artist whose work intimately connected to women's stories and traumas during the war – from the perspective of a man. Even if that man is her son.

Throughout the movie, we see snippets of other potential angles that ended up lost in the mix, like voiceover narrations from Lee's perspective and the meticulous recreation of her most iconic photographs.

There is a great movie in Lee – for instance, how Miller's photographs intimately depicted women's realities after the war, from the head-shavings of alleged nazi collaborators to the unpunished sexual assaults on women by both sides of the conflict.

However, it just needed a bit more bravery to bring it out and stick with it.

Lee is out now in UK cinemas.
Elizabeth “Lee” Miller receives the biopic treatment this September with a new film starring Oscar-winning actress Kate Winslet. “Lee” tells the story of former model Lee Miller’s photography and correspondence during World War II, highlighting the lengths to which the photographer went to capture some of the most indelible images for the time.

Ahead of its release, learn more about “Lee,” including its premiere date, plot and director.

What is “Lee” about?
“Lee” follows Lee Miller (Kate Winslet) through a pivotal decade in the American war correspondent and photographer’s life. The film highlights Miller’s participation in the war efforts, and how she managed to capture some of the most shocking images from World War II, particularly images of women and victims of the war.

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Kate Winslet in “Lee.” © Roadside Attractions / Courtesy Everett collection
The film also depicts Miller’s private life and how her work impacted the world years after her time Europe, including moments from Miller’s senior years when she is reflecting on her time and work during the war. In shedding light on Miller’s work and personal life, “Lee” also depicts how the photographer confronted a deeply held childhood trauma.

When does “Lee” hit theaters?
“Lee” debuts in theaters Sept. 27. The film is rated R for disturbing images, language and nudity.

Who directs “Lee”?
“Lee” is directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Ellen Kuras. In 2009, Kuras earned the Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature for her 2008 film “The Betrayal.” Kuras is also a noted cinematographer and has worked on such films as “If These Walls Could Talk,” “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and “A Little Chaos.” Winslet starred in the latter two films.

kate winslet, lee miller
“Lee” poster. © Roadside Attractions / Courtesy Everett
With Winslet leading the film, “Lee” costars Josh O’Connor, Alexander Skarsgård, Oscar-nominated actress Andrea Riseborough, Andy Samberg and Oscar-winner Marion Cotillard.

Are there any trailers?
Roadside Attractions and Vertical recently released the first teaser trailer for “Lee.”

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Earlier this year, cinemagoers thrilled to Civil War. A splashy blockbuster about US social collapse, the film involved a war photographer: Lee, a blonde American, bone-weary but in the thick of it. She was played by Kirsten Dunst, with character and actor the saving graces of an otherwise empty movie. Now, we get the real thing. Lee, starring Kate Winslet, is the biopic of Elizabeth “Lee” Miller, the singular woman who took indelible pictures of the second world war from London, Normandy and, finally, Germany. The result tells something like the truth. It makes for a far better film.

But this is still a movie, with the usual caveats. Miller was an exile from Poughkeepsie, New York. Winslet is not. Only in screenplays, too, does life get the neat narrative frame it does here. We open in 1977, when a brittle Miller, gin at hand, is interviewed by a sniffy reporter. (He is played by Josh O’Connor in one of several small roles taken by big-name actors, suggesting admiration for Miller and/or Winslet, who co-produced the film. See also: Marion Cotillard and Alexander Skarsgård.)

Reality is never far away. Flashing back to bohemian prewar France, the drag of beauty standards mean a 31-year-old Miller has already had to reinvent herself after the end of a modelling career. Luckily, she has other talents. She is, she says, a natural at “drinking, sex and taking pictures”. Later, in the London of the Blitz, society snapper Cecil Beaton is catty about her age. More fool him, the movie shrugs.

Lee is filmmaker Ellen Kuras’s first feature, and her handling has snap. But the busy script needs a lot of directing. Too often, characters talk in gobs of historical detail, as if they had just read each other’s Wikipedia page. And you may want more time with the actual photographs, so striking are the glimpses here: reportage of young women in air-raid fire masks, the eerily deserted restaurant-land of Charlotte Street. If the film is out to give credit where due, it could take longer reminding us for what.

Kate Winslet and Marion Cotillard in ‘Lee’ © Kimberley French
But kudos to Winslet for getting Lee made, and conjuring so vividly the one-off Miller was. The star does what a gifted actor can, treating the factoids as footnotes and bringing to life the person. Some traits are always front and centre: a refusal to simper; sexual freedom; equal parts will and fragility. But the performance comes with surprises too. At its nub, the film asks why Miller hungered to reach wartime Europe, and see the abyss in close-up. She often learns the answers as we do. Like many of us, this Miller can be a mystery to herself.

Vérité abounds. In war, bodies are torn apart, of course. But the strangest, strongest section of the story comes when Miller crosses Europe in the last days before German surrender. Friends expect Paris to be a joyous party. In fact, it is a traumatised daze. Unearthly light haunts the road to Dachau. Further on still lies Hitler’s Munich apartment, a near-surreal heart of darkness. 

In Civil War, the fictional Lee took a similar journey in a movie that a lot of blood could not make serious. In Lee, the sequence lands like the best of the film surrounding it, with a power beyond camera tricks. 
Kate Winslet takes centre frame in this biopic of model turned war photographer Lee Miller, whose snapshots of the frontline – and namely the discovery of concentration camps – have become some of the defining accounts of the experience and atrocities of the Second World War. Read our Lee movie review below.

Lee movie review
Photo credit: Kimberly French – Lee movie review continues below
It’s a remarkable life, is that of Lee Miller. A free-spirited New Yorker who quickly found her calling, becoming a renowned model on the NYC culture scene by the time she was 18, and eventually embarking on a life that saw her rub shoulders with emerging artists of the 20th century across Europe as she studied and perfected her artform: photography. It’s an impressive and fascinating life before one even gets to her considerable contributions as a war correspondent during World War Two working for Vogue magazine.

That fact is not lost on star-producer Kate Winslet, who has been trying to get Lee’s story to the big screen for most of the last decade, almost literally breaking her back to get it over the line after injuring herself early in production. Her dedication is very clear and evident in the final piece, as her performance deftly balances Lee’s strong will and empathetic worldview. It’s a fully formed performance, which while unsurprising considering Winslet’s immense talents, is comfortably the strongest aspect of this otherwise disappointingly by-the-numbers biopic.

Related: Watch the teaser trailer for ‘Lee’ with Kate Winslet

The supporting cast is largely strong, even if there are a lot of recognisable names in roles that are often fleeting. The best among the supporting players is Andy Samberg, who more than steps up to the plate when called upon to do more dramatic fare than he is used to. Playing Life magazine photographer David Scherman, Samberg pairs well with Winslet, with the two forming a partnership that feels effortless and supportive. There’s a strong bond and trust at the heart of Lee and David’s relationship, and crucially the two stars convey that convincingly between each other on screen.

The rest of the cast, which features the likes of Josh O’Connor, Marion Cotillard, Andrea Riseborough and Alexander Skarsgard are a mixed bag, both as a result of under-written roles and slight miscasting. The script itself is often a disjointed affair, very much adopting a ‘and then’ approach to its narrative, all within a framing device which goes for a ‘twist’ reveal at the end that feels a bit cheap and misjudged.

The film is effective in a couple of key scenes, namely in Lee and David at the site of a concentration camp and when they find themselves in Hitler’s apartment. The weight of the discoveries made is bleakly and honestly portrayed, while the bizarre atmosphere of stepping into Hitler’s apartment is well-constructed, leaving an eerie sense of the uncanny.

Ellen Kuras – making her directorial debut after working as a cinematographer on documentaries and the likes of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,- keeps things visually quite clean and stark, which works in some of the film’s bleaker moments. But you can’t help but crave a little more visual flair, particularly when considering the subject matter of a photographer and figure of the fashion world.

Lee certainly has elements to admire, namely its central performance, as well as its deduction to telling Lee Miller’s story and bringing it to the mainstream. She’s a pioneering figure and deserves to be remembered as such. But the film itself often feels like it’s in a bit of a dramatic cul-de-sac, rarely crafting a sense of momentum or leaving behind much of an impression on a visual level. It has moments of sobering power, but they often too prove too few and fleeting thanks to a screenplay which struggles to know quite how to do its subject justice.