Movie Name: Lee
Directed by: Ellen Kuras
Starring: Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, Andrea Riseborough, Andy Samberg, Noémie Merlant, Josh O’Connor, Alexander Skarsgård
Genre: Biography, Drama, History
Running Time: 116 Minutes
Release Date: 27 September, 2024
Rating:
Production Companies: Sky Original, Brouhaha Entertainment Juggle Films
Box Office: $15 million
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.
Lee: 2024 British Biographical Drama Film
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 war 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 will be released theatrically in the United Kingdom by Sky Cinema on 13 September 2024.
The story of photographer Elizabeth ‘Lee’ Miller, a fashion model who became an acclaimed war correspondent for Vogue magazine during World War II.
Filming began in late September 2022 in Croatia. Production paused for a short period that month when Winslet slipped during filming and was taken to the hospital. 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.
Filming also took place in Hungary and wrapped in early December 2022.
Lee had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on 9 September 2023. It is set to be released theatrically by Sky Cinema in the United Kingdom and Ireland on 13 September 2024. 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. The film’s release would subsequently be delayed by a week to 27 September.
Lee Movie Trailer:
Movie Review:
A Remarkable Life at War
Kate Winslet embodies the tenacity of the photographer Lee Miller, who documented World War II for British Vogue.
“Lee,” starring Kate Winslet as the photographer Lee Miller, is smartly trained on a span of 10 years: from 1938 until shortly after World War II.
Miller’s biography sounds nearly apocryphal. Born in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., she was a model for Vogue, a student of the artist Man Ray (and his muse), and a fashion photographer whose work often reflected her own Surrealist sensibilities. Miller documented the war for British Vogue — then under the editorship of the English journalist Audrey Withers (Andrea Riseborough) — often in the company of the Life photographer David Scherman (Andy Samberg).
It would be hard for any narrative feature film to capture the many facets of the photographer responsible for some of the most indelible images of World War II. Winslet embodies those dimensions — as well as Miller’s propulsive drive — often with an askance look, a whetted remark, a resolve both stubborn and practical.
Alexander Skarsgard portrays Miller’s British husband, Roland Penrose. The two meet prickly, if teasingly so, at a gathering in the South of France that also includes French Vogue’s Solange d’Ayen (Marion Cotillard) and her husband, Jean (Patrick Mille), and the Surrealists Nusch and Paul Éluard (Noémie Merlant and Vincent Colombe). Some of these friends appear again at the war’s end; Cotillard is especially devastating as d’Ayen.
The movie begins with a framing device: Miller being interviewed by a journalist in her farmhouse in 1977, which allows her to tell her story. The director Ellen Kuras uses Miller’s actual photos and recreates a number of her more piercing images throughout the film — as a tribute, but also as a call to head to the archive. “Lee” feeds the desire to seek out more of her images. Winslet’s performance demands that we consider the force behind the camera.