Life isn't perfect, people aren't perfect either, they are sometimes annoying. We might forget it and think our life is crap, with all the films that we can see at the cinema. Always perfect characters, brave, pretty, even when they cry, but nobody is pretty when they cry, etc... For once it is not the case in this film ant it makes me feel relieved. The characters are sometimes annoying, like Cynthia with her hysterical crises, but it makes them more human, realistic. A few weeks ago, I met Timothy Spall ( who plays Maurice) with my high school and he told us about the process of Mike Leigh's creation of characters . The actors worked a lot improvising the scenes to build up their character's personality traits. That is why their performances were so great, they perfectly embody their characters, it is impressive. This film is breath-taking by its realism, I've loved that. I've also liked Mike Leigh's way of filming, like the scene at Maurice's workplace at the beginning, when he tries to make is clients smile, that was well filmed. It is really an Oscar-worthy movie, I totally understand why it won a prize. But there were two scenes which annoyed me though. It was with Monica. The fact, that she is represented as the perfect housewife who cleans the room and cooks is very sexist I think. I mean, Maurice's and Monica's couple were too much a representation of the « traditional couple » to me. And the scene where she is angry because she has her period was so cliché ! Despite these scenes I've loved that film, and I highly recommend it, to people who want realism in movies. I really want more films like that one.

Some life incidents are so shameful we wish we could just erase them from memory and move forward. But in real life, circumstances force us to resort to secrets and lies, no malice behind it, just survival instinct. But you can't buy peace of mind by credit; there comes a time when you pay the bill and the longer you've been lingering on your secrets, the more emotionally devastating the effects are, but out of the chaos, something positive can come, you've got to take the bad with the good, and vice versa."Secrets & Lies", Golden Palm winner of 1996, opens with Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn), a sad-eyed box factory worker, with a squeaky voice that hints us about her emotional vulnerability. This is a woman in such a desperate need for love something from the past must have derailed her life. Indeed, she had two daughters from illegitimate relationships (one might be a rape). Hortense, a black woman, played by Marianne Jean-Baptiste, was born from the first pregnancy and was adopted by a black family. We meet her at her adoptive mother's funeral and after two months of grief, she decided to find her natural mother. The second girl is Roxanne (Claire Rushbrook), a soon-to-be 21-year-old girl, working as a street sweeper. Between Roxanne and Cynthia, you can't really call it maternal love; it's a sort of one-sided love-and-hate relationship, Hortense had luckily prevented from. From what it seems, her adoption was more of a blessing. She's no sweeper but an independent and articulate optometrist."Secrets & Lies" follows the path that will lead Hortense to Cynthia and concludes on the revelation, one that will affect Cynthia's life but by a snowball effect all the family members who based their relationship on other secrets and other lies. There's an extraordinary sequence where one confession leads to another, and we feel the pains and the cries as profoundly as if we were parts of these families. I never saw a Mike Leigh film until "Secrets & Lies" but now, this is a director I'm looking forward to discovering. I've never felt so strongly toward a director's work after one film, ever since I discovered John Cassavetes through his masterpiece "A Woman Under the Influence".And the comparison extends to the performance of Brenda Blethyn as Cynthia, perhaps the only acting to equal Gena Rowlands. Cynthia is such a sweet, tender and compassionate woman, punctuating her words with 'sweethearts' and 'darling' in such a way you can't ever feel angry toward her. Except for Roxanne who's in a rush to celebrate her 21st birthday, and go live with her boyfriend, a carpenter named Paul (Lee Ross). The dysfunctional mother-and-daughter relationship doesn't have a specific root, but something's eating Cynthia and creates a sort of existential block, if you don't come to term with your past, how can you ever face the present let alone the future? That's the question this truly life-changing and cathartic movie asks.And "Secrets & Lies" accomplishes other miracles; for one thing, it's a triumph of acting. Blethyn is so extraordinary I can't understand why she didn't win an Oscar. The film had two acting nominations, but everyone was Oscar-worthy. They don't play characters but people and so authentically they remind you someone of your entourage, maybe yourself. Maurice, Cynthia's brother, played by Timothy Spall, is a photographer who does well in his job but whose menage doesn't stand on solid pillars. Monica (Phyllis Young) is irritable, distant and spends so much time taking care of the house you wonder what she tries to compensate, and why she fails to respect her husband.It all comes down to repressed feelings, causing people reunited by love to be estranged from each other, and it'll take one outsider, Hortense, to throw the bombshell. And the build-ups were so meticulously constructed that any display of emotions is rewarding. This is not just a triumph of acting but directing too, Leigh stages his film like in theater with single-take scenes relying on emotions, not action, whether a phone call where Blethyn's facial expressions goes from suspicion to confusion, or during the café scene, where she can't remember having a relationship with a black man, and then you can pinpoint the realization instantly coming with her tearful reaction. And when Hortense asks Cynthia if she has a boyfriend, then Cynthia says she's been in enough trouble, she cracks up and cries again. It's like an emotional roller-coaster proving that indeed some situations are so tragic you better laugh about them.Speaking of laughs, the film isn't all shouting and crying, most of the time, it's quiet and even provides us some comical moments, especially with the little portrait montage. But I suspect most viewers would stay on guard, expecting an ending à la "Requiem for a Dream" but what do you know, the film manages to surprise the viewers again and ends happily. And that it took that angle is the proof of its maturity and intelligence. These are people who lived unhappy for years and could finally take a new start once they came to terms with the past, it's not a life-changing experience as Maurice is still a photographer, he still loves his wife, and Hortense didn't have any problem before meeting Cynthia, she doesn't have any after but something changed definitely, and for the best.Indeed, after this tough emotional journey, it was the perfect ending, one that shows that for all the secrets and lies that can poison our lives, we can still count on love, respect and understanding from the people we love. This is a triumph of acting, directing and storytelling and yet that feels so documentary-like real, like a sort of slice of lives of real people with real problem and coming to the realization that problems are inevitable parts of life and the real thrill is to overcome them.

The characters of "Secrets and Lies" contain just as much regret as they do, well... secrets and lies. The film revolves around various sides of one family, including one woman that was set up for adoption at birth and separated from her family. I will start to explain why this film is so great with a brief description of each character.Let me start by saying every performance and every character in this film is memorable, specifically the sudden appearances of the beauty agent that had been in a car crash, and the previous owner of one character'study photography business, both two examples of characters that "drew the short end of the stick" and were forced to live with it, but they were miserable because they would dwell on it. But I'll only be going into the main ones. Cynthia Parley is a single mother who has no living parents, but still keeps her father's room with all of his belongings in it. She has had to work all of her life and give and give and give and yet now she has no one, besides Maurice, her brother, who she rarely sees. She looks at herself now and knows that she isn't nearly as attractive as she used to be, and she has wasted the chance she got. Her daughter, Roxanne, hates her, probably because she feels so unwanted by her mother, so she often spends her time with her boyfriend. Roxanne's uncle, Maurice, has to put up with his wife, Monica, who is going through testing to see if she can somehow have a child. They have been keeping this testing a secret for many years. This is slowly bringing these two apart, but Maurice is patient and thoughtful, but also like the many other characters, regretful of many things. Particularly never having given his father the love that he should've while he was alive, since he hated his father for never talking about his mother, but now he understands that he didn't want to talk about her because it was tearing him apart inside. And then there's Hortense Cumberbatch, who Cynthia set up for adoption at birth and barely even remembers. But when Hortense's adopted mother dies, she feels that she needs to reunite with her real mother because maybe she just needs to know that there is someone out there that is still really connected to her. She calls Cynthia, who is in a position at that moment in which her daughter has just rejected her. Cynthia feels mixed emotions, but finally agrees to meet her. They begin to meet more often and get to know each other, and in a way, Hortense is the only person Cynthia is completely honest with for a while. Then Cynthia invites Hortense to a barbecue that Maurice is holding for Roxanne's 21st birthday, but doesn't want to tell her family yet that Hortense is her daughter, so she claims she is just a friend from work.Cynthia's first reaction to her brothers house is awe, and obvious jealousy at how nice it is. However, Monica takes it for granted, as she has her own personal problems. Then they go outside to eat dinner. This scene is shot in several very long takes, in which the dialogue bounces from one character to the next at a fast pace, occasionally in two separate conversations. It is normal small talk, but because of Hortense, Cynthia, and Monica, it feels like there is a ticking time bomb beneath the table as they speak. Maurice is very playful with Roxanne and Roxanne clearly likes Maurice more than her own mother. Cynthia seems like she is trying to show off Hortense while also trying to hide the fact that Hortense is her daughter, which creates some very awkward moments. But when Monica and Maurice hand Roxanne her gift, Cynthia realizes that she doesn't have one, or even worse, Roxanne might not even care if she did. This sets her off, and she finally confesses that Hortense is her daughter. For the rest of the film, the camera work seems to be mostly close ups and shots of single people in the frame, in contrast with the earlier wide, long shots which included everyone in the frame. This obviously infuriates Roxanne, who takes it out on everyone for keeping the secret from her, and storms out of the room. Then Monica insults Cynthia for not treating her child right, to which Cynthia responds yelling at Monica because she regrets giving them money in the past to get Maurice's company started when she got nothing in return. This leads to a back and forth which leads to Cynthia saying "You wanna try bringing up a child on your own?", which of course leads to Monicas secret of infertility being revealed, and Maurice finally letting out the frustration that these secrets and lies had caused that he'd been holding in for the entire film.The film ends on a surprisingly lighter note, but the characters earn it, and it's not sappy and melodramatic but simple and believable. Everyone has regrets, but these regrets shouldn't lead to more secrets and lies from the ones we love, since all we can do now is live with what we have and not telling the truth will only pull you further apart from those who you need to keep close. The characters learn this lesson the hard way, so those who watch the film don't have to.

A very good movie: I was expecting a spy movie but instead got a movie exploring prejudices, relationships and family bonds. The acting is superb by all involved, in fact you can easily forget you are watching a movie, everything is so real and natural. Too often you see movies about broken families as being the accepted norm, this movie goes that extra step and shows us in a very powerful way, how blood is thicker than water. A colored grieving young lady, manages to track down her biological mother after 26 years and in doing so manages to bring together several dysfunctional families and forces them to face and overcome their repressed prejudices. A powerful movie (not a fairy tale) full of human emotions and compassion, where love finally wins. (you'll need a box of tissues).