The year is 1938, and 31-year-old American fashion-model-turned-photojournalist Lee Miller (Kate Winsler) visits in rural France in order to meet with friends, including the perky Solange (Marion Cotillard) and the outspoken Nusch (Noémie Merlant). The setting is idyllic, and the encounter filled with a real sense of joy and liberation, represented by the women’s unabashed desire to go topless. Lee falls in love with the handsome Roland Penrose (Alexander Skarsgård), an English painter and sculptor supportive of her professional determination, and unfazed by her feminist quips. Despite the high spirits, the threat of a major conflict is already looming large. The friends watch in horror footage of Hitler being saluted by large and sycophantic crowds, immediately pointing to the dangers of authoritarianism.

The newly-formed and fully infatuated couple move to London immediately after the outbreak of WW2, confident that the British capital will remain immune to the Nazi bombings. Lee remains keen to join the war effort as a photojournalist for Vogue, but the British refuse to send a woman to the battlefield. So she asks her American compatriots instead. They accredit her with the US Army as a war correspondent for Condé Nast Publications (the mass media company behind Vogue). She proceeds to capture some of the most horrific war developments in graphic detail with her camera, often putting her own life at extreme risk. These includes casualties at the warfront, the use of napalm, skeletal corpses in concentration camps, and even Hitler’s apartment in Munich. She poses naked inside his bath tube, his portrait standing next to her, in a picture intended to mock Eva Braun (it became one of her most recognisable works).

Much of the story is narrated by a 70-year-old version of Lee, in the year 1977 (also played by Winsler). An inquisitive young man called Tony (Josh O’Connor) interviews her. He seems to be a journalist. Lee becomes vaguely annoyed by his persistence. Perhaps some things should be kept secret after all. The movie’s final scene reveals the real significance of this encounter, with a clever little narrative twist.

Our protagonist is determined and resilient, despite the males who shudder at her presence in the battlefield. Some find it downright insulting that a woman should carry a weapon (a dangerous device called “camera”). This is a movie that sets out to rescue a staunch woman partly erased by history. The film star, producer and champion insisted that the movie should be directed by a female filmmaker. She eventually settled for Ellen Kuras, who is primarily a cinematographer and television director. Winslet comes across as charming and likeable, yet never red-blooded and tough. The 48-year-old Titanic (James Cameron, 1997) star is just too anodyne, girl-next-door for the of role. Very sweet. Never kick-arse.

Tragically, Vogue never published the majority of Lee;s work, thanks to her British editor-in-chief Audrey Withers (Andrea Riseborough). That had nothing to do with Lee being a woman, but instead with the realism of her pictures. The world was not prepared for such frankness. Lee became infuriated, insisting instead that people should be able to see horror in its integrity. That’s the film’s most significant takeaway of this 116-minute drama: images of war should neither be neither erased nor sanitised. Sadly, the film creators contradict their own message by crafting a visually lame and aesthetically unremarkable movie. Lee’s pictures were intended to shock and disturb, reminding viewers that war is ugly. Lee is a movie designed to entertain, reminding viewers that the seventh art is bloody amazing.

Lee is in cinemas everywhere on Friday, September 13th.