Lee review: Kate Winslet strong in biopic of Lee Miller, World War 2 photographer

"Lee" is a handsomely upholstered account of the life of the American model-turned-photographer Lee Miller. Photo / Sky Cinema, Kimberley French

REVIEW

The British star is excellent as the American World War II photographer Lee Miller, but her cast-mates are considerably less well served.

Forget the mists and mellow fruitfulness. Autumn at the cinema is the season of ripening biopics with designs on the Oscars – and this year, Kate Winslet’s is the first to be plucked. Directed by the seasoned cinematographer Ellen Kuras, Lee is a handsomely upholstered account of the life of the American model-turned-photographer Lee Miller, whose images captured behind the World War II frontline would stun the Western world.

Although Winslet has been fighting to get the film made for nine years, it arrives feeling oddly on-trend. Much of it smacks of Pablo Larrain’s just-finished trilogy of female-icon biopics: 2016′s Jackie (as in Kennedy), 2021′s Spencer (Diana) and this year’s Maria (Callas), which premiered two weeks ago at Venice.

And it’s equally hard not to be reminded of Civil War, the recent Alex Garland thriller which starred Kirsten Dunst as a character inspired by Miller, chronicling the collapse of the United States from the inside. Unlike Garland’s film, however, there’s no attempt to cast light on the grey-space morality of war photography itself. And unlike Larrain’s, Miller’s character is rounded and robust, with no psychological fault lines to poke at.

We meet the elderly Lee in her living room, surrounded by shoeboxes overflowing with photographs and with a steadying vodka and cigarette to hand. On the sofa opposite – in a framing device surely pilfered from Jackie – sits a journalist from Vogue magazine (Josh O’Connor), who has come to grill Lee about her life’s work. He’s initially sceptical, probably because the film needs him to be, but this gives way to admiration as he hears more of her memories and sees more of her photographs – some shared more freely than others. It also sets up a climactic twist, which is both sweet and bizarrely surplus to requirements.

Why Lee’s lead should have wanted to make the film is never in doubt. The part is Now That’s What I Call Kate Winslet! 2024, featuring all of the actress’s strong suits: rosy sensuality; tangly-haired gumption in extremis; pert, period-appropriate defiance of patriarchal mores. (The film’s whole-life scope also showcases her knack for pinning down the truth of a character at various life stages.)

Her cast-mates are considerably less well served, though – notably Alexander Skarsgard, who’s left to spin in the wind somewhat as the eccentric English artist Roland Penrose, who becomes Lee’s second spouse. Elsewhere, you’ll find eight-time Cesar nominee Marion Cotillard and Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping’s Andy Samberg – both appearing in the same film for the first and presumably only time, in roles that fail to do much with their wildly dissimilar talents.

Like all of the supporting players here, they’re secondary mechanisms in a methodical this-then-that plot, which certainly stirs and entertains but seems reluctant to do more. Miller’s work is courageous, she was under-appreciated, and that’s essentially that. Lee certainly celebrates Miller as a difficult woman – one who energetically defies every feminine-propriety rule of the age and more. But it gives both its subject and audience the easiest of rides.