Focus on Vogue-model-cum-war-correspondent in Kate Winslet passion project years in the making

There aren’t many jokes in Civil War, writer-director Alex Garland’s recent unsettling movie about a near-future USA fracturing into armed conflict. But there is one laugh in an early scene when veteran war photographer Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst) is buttonholed by a wannabe snapper.

“You have the same name as my hero: Lee Miller,” gushes the young fangirl. “Do you know her stuff?” (This is like going up to Noel Gallagher and saying: “I love your band. Do you know The Beatles?”) Dunst’s deadpan reaction in the face of such naive enthusiasm is sublime.

But then – as if to underline that Garland himself certainly knows who Lee Miller is – Civil War cuts to a shot of Dunst soaking in the tub of a tiled hotel bathroom. It’s a deliberate visual echo of one of Miller’s most intriguing images: a self-portrait captured in the bathtub of Hitler’s abandoned Munich apartment. It was taken on the same day she entered Dachau as one of the first journalists to document the obscenities that had taken place there.

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Now we have a whole film exploring Miller’s turbulent life of artistic hedonism and wartime horrors. Adapted from the 1985 biography The Lives of Lee Miller – written by her son Antony Penrose – Lee has been a long-gestating passion project for star and producer Kate Winslet. That book title hints at Miller’s hopscotching existence: born in Poughkeepsie, New York in 1907, she was a Vogue cover star and model at 19 before embedding with the Surrealists in Europe – notably Man Ray – to learn how to become a photographer herself.

Rather than trying to pack absolutely everything in, Lee (directed by revered cinematographer Ellen Kuras in her fiction feature film debut) focuses on Miller’s Second World War experiences. After an explosive introduction, we join her in 1937 living a life of topless picnicking and political debate among her creative coterie in France.

At the age of 30, Miller’s modelling career may be over but, by her own cheerful admission, she is still good at “drinking, having sex and taking pictures”. Her free-spirited demeanour certainly bowls over visiting UK artist Roland Penrose (Alexander Skarsgård), who is smitten in minutes and bedded within hours.

By the time war is declared in 1939, Miller is in London with Penrose, who has been tapped up to use his artistic skills to develop civilian camouflage patterns. For her part, Miller barges into Vogue UK seeking work as a photographer. Supportive editor Audrey Withers (Andrea Riseborough in cut-glass mode) recognises her drive and talent. But while Vogue UK will happily publish her shots of life amid the bombed-out streets of the home front, the magazine is reluctant to send Miller where she really wants to go: the front line in Europe.

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This unquiet American will not be deterred. She hustles her way into the press corps with the help of Life photographer David E Scherman (Andy Samberg). Unfortunately, no-one is entirely sure how to deal with the first-ever female war correspondent. Initially barred from army press briefings, Miller has to improvise and adapt, capturing moments of carnage and courage with her ever-present twin-lens Rollieflex camera. 

It is a meaty role for Winslet, who convincingly embodies both the deep empathy and prickly edges of a complex personality, particularly when the near-unimaginable horrors of the present unlock traumas in Miller’s past. If the casting of comedy star Samberg seems a little out of step with the rest of the stacked ensemble – including Oscar winner Marion Cotillard as the fashion director of French Vogue – he and Winslet have a sweet chemistry that helps offset some of the film’s darker chapters. His character Scherman was also on hand to help Miller set up her famous photo in Hitler’s bath, a scene that is carefully recreated and given some intriguing extra context here.

For a movie about someone who was deeply involved with the Surrealist movement, Lee does occasionally feel like a rather boilerplate biopic. But a framing narrative set in 1977 – in which Lee’s grown-up son Antony (Josh O’Connor) is trying to get his mother to open up about the past between strong gins – does allow itself a late theatrical flourish. It may have taken a decade to shepherd to the screen but Winslet does right by her subject. 

Lee is in cinemas from 13 September.

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