Lee (2023 – 2025 in Spain)

Plot of Lee: Lee Miller as an older woman is being interviewed by a young man who at times picks up photographs which lie on a table between them. The reminisces. She is a former Vogue model who became a photographer and still meets her friends, and at one gathering meets Roland Penrose. On the basis of her former relationship with Vogue she gets a job of photographing Brits in wartime roles, and once the Americans join the war she gets a job as a war correspondent, paired up with Life photographer David Scherman. The photographers track their way across France, sometimes close to the combat, and finally arrive at the concentration camps, photographing the remnants of the Nazi atrocities. Later back in Britain Vogue do not publish the distressing photos because the censors felt that the public had already been sufficiently traumatised. Lee is angry and seemingly destroys her work.

Content: There is a bit of nudity in non-sexual contexts. The is quite a bit of narration as the young man interviews Lee possibly some time in the 1970s. So most of the film is in flashback, where people drink a lot, particularly what seems to be whiskey and they smoke all the time. Just a bit about Lee’s life before the war but mainly her as a photographer, taking the pics which form the scenes of the film, and now and again coming under fire in France. Particularly featured are the French young women being shorn of their hair for collaborating with the Germans and some of the debris and distress in the concentration camps. Also Lee taking a bath in Hitler’s bathroom.

A View: I admit that we only went to see this film because we fancied an outing and that was the best English language movie available in Madrid. It is one of those outing which you don’t want to be negative about because of the subject, but honestly I found myself a bit stuck since we know that Lee Miller had a son, but he never gets a mention in the flashbacks. It takes a dip into her life to find that it was after the war that her son was born. But surely she’d be a bit old I thought. But no she had been in her thirties during her wartime activities, but, dare I say it – Kate Winslet looked quite a bit older, and never looked as if she had ever been a model. I think this was a conscious step taken in the presentation of the film. And now you know about it perhaps it might be an easier watch, when it comes out on your cable channel.

Fun fact: Andy Samberg, playing David Scherman, is apparently a Saturday Night Live comedian. He is the best thing in the film.