Secrets & Lies
1996, 142 minutes, Rated M
Picking up the Palme d'Or. a Golden Globe and three BAFTAs and signalling a break-out for British director Mike Leigh, Secrets & Lies is a moving, multi-layered and hilarious melodrama, which probes the complexity and vulnerability of family relationships and the search for identity. After the death of her adoptive mother, Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), a young professional black woman, goes in search of her birth mother - the fragile. anxiety-ridden Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn: Clubland, Pride & Prejudice).
Intrigue turns to bemusement when she discovers that her mother is in fact a working-class white woman living with her surly 20 year-old daughter. Roxanne (Claire Rushbrook). No one in the family, except Cynthia's successful younger brother Maurice (Timonthy Snail: Harry Potter, Sweeney Todd) and his wife Monica (Phyllis Logan) knows that the teenage Cynthia gave up a child for adoption without ever seeing the baby.
As they come to terms with their new-found bond, Cynthia takes Hortense to a family barbeque,
which triggers the unravelling of the family's secrets and lies, in a cathartic, emotional sweep. Blethyn, Jean-Baptiste and Spell give remarkably vulnerable performances, with Blethyn's Cynthia wowing the critics and audiences alike.
Mike Leigh's superlative drama, Secrets & Lies is at once hysterically funny and profoundly sad, and is a rich, breathtaking and rewarding experience.
- Director:
- Mike Leigh [8],
- Screen Formats:
- Widescreen 1.85:1
- Language and Sound:
- English Dolby Digital Stereo
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