DRAMA - Secret Smile Research and Chosen Scenes

Secret Smile Research and Chosen Scenes




 Secret Smile is a two part drama directed by Christopher Menaul and was aired December 2005. The plot begins as a young 30 year old Miranda Cotton dates a man she met at a friends birthday, Brendan Block. They date for around a week and she breaks it off when he invades her privacy. Brendan has by this point become attached to Miranda and begins to cause emotional damage to her and her family. First he becomes engaged to Miranda's sister Kerry and leads her manic depressive brother astray, resulting in his death. On the day of the wedding Brendan runs off with Miranda's best friend Laura and marries her instead. After Laura is mysteriously found dead in the bath, Miranda starts to investigate further into Brendan's life. She teams up with Brendan's new 'love' Naomi who wants to help as Brendan has become abusive. Miranda fakes her own death and starts a new life in Australia with Naomi's family and Brendan is jailed for Murder. This is only revealed at the end, creating a fantastic plot twist.  

Secret Smile is based on the Nicci French novel "Secret Smile" which was originally published in January 2003. The writers of the book were a husband and wife duo (Nicci Gerard and Sean French) and together they have been writing novels since 1995. Together they have roughly around 48 different novels that they have written together over the years and all seem to have a similar underlying tone of edginess and creepiness that create such exotic plots that the reader doesn't see coming. 

 When Miranda's blood is discovered in the bathroom, the audience is completely ripped from any knowledge of what happened to her and we then aren't reunited with her until the end of the film. Due to the detachment that the audience feels, we are almost positioned in the emotions of Brendan as he expresses his confusion and bewilderment as Police are carting him away. However, although the audience empathises with his feelings at that moment, they still hope he gets sent down as the audiences believes with every part of them that Brendan has killed her. It is this feeling of shock and disbelief that I would like to reinstall into the audience when I come to re directing however I would like to show some different scenes as the end scene is very dialogue heavy. 


 When discussing plot line, Menaul begins the story at the end of Miranda's funeral before telling the audience what has happened. I do like this beginning because as soon as we first see Miranda a year before her death we are instantly looking out for threats that could be the cause of her death. This creates a lot of suspense for the audience throughout and you never really feel comfortable watching it, but I feel that if I was to tell the story in chronological order from Brendan's point of view, it would make the reveal of her death much more shocking to the audience.

 I am going to attempt to create this story using snippets from the two episodes that will set the audience on edge from the moment we first meet Brendan and Miranda right up until the end. These are the scenes I am going to try and re direct. 



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