Secrets & Lies (1996)

Thanks for the memories!

Awesome Movie

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Ok. I've read the story plot but to me it makes it more confusing as I have been trying to find a movie title where a young woman learns she was adopted and goes through a lot to find her mother. it isn't until the end of the movie when she visits the woman and tells her what she was told about her birth mother, but the woman says, "I'm not your mother" and as the woman is leaving her birth mother calls her by I guess the name she had given to this woman when she was born.

Secrets and Lies is about important themes in life: love, family, children, adoption... The movie is about a young woman who wants to know her birth-mother. But her birth-mother ignores she have another daughter until she enters her life. And when they meet, everything changes. But it creates more tensions between the mother and her second daughter but also wit the rest of the family. The thing I liked best in this film is the humorous side which is present all the film long. The actors and actresses are really good, even more when we underline the fact that they didn't even have a script because the film director, Mike Leigh, always works without a script. It is always improvisation. The films got nominated for a lot of awards, actors too, and it was well-deserved, the actors were truly Oscar-worthy. We also had the chance with my class to meet one of the lead actors, Timothy Spall, who plays Maurice, Cynthia's brother in the film and it was a truly incredible experience. He was really kind and nice with us and he answered all our questions clearly, he did his best to answer our questions. But what I dislike about the movie is that, sometimes there are scenes which are too long, slow-moving scenes and it is really boring. But I think is the only weakness point of the movie. Otherwise, it is a good movie, for the characters, the plot and the moral.

It has been 7 years since I first started to watch the film since 2010. And I love it because of humour and empathy in it. The relationship between the characters are different. One by one : Maurice's wife who can not have a baby doesn't give love to her husband as much as Cynthia does; the fact that Hortense and Cynthia (her mother) meet in a Tense period but then forget the whole problems, thanks to a nice meeting as friends in a Restaurant; and finally the different neighbourhoods of the brother and his sister: Maurice and Cynthia. What I like the most is the fact that film is made by Mike Leigh with some humour. The Climax of the film is the BBQ scene in Maurice's house. The shooting lasted hours as Timothy said in the Liger Teather of Nîmes. Mike Leigh also highlighted the fact that the Film is based on everyday's life in an interview. Because of the method of Mike Leigh the Actors should have received an Oscar for their actor's fame and their improvisation. Timothy Spall said that the time of improvisation before the shooting was very long, and his peace of steak in his meal was terrible because of the numerous rehearsal, before the shooting of the scenes. In addiction I can say that Mike Leigh's sense of humour is the most pleasant thing in this film. I will finish with the sentence of Timothy Spall, on which he insisted a lot: " Don't be an actor because you want but be an actor because you need to be an actor."

Secrets and Lies(1996) is definitely not a usual movie. The power of lies and secrets is well studied in a big part of the movie. We recognize Mike Leigh as film director ; improvisations, personal performances ... I even heard that he didn't use scripts. He just lets the actors be their character. The actor's performances is awesome. We sometimes feel pity for them, and sometimes they make you laugh. That is one of the good points in the movie : touching and funny. As some scenes are full of emotion, we need to laugh. I met Timothy Spall, Maurice, and he's really Maurice. I mean Timothy and Maurice are very much connected and Timothy makes Maurice alive. If you want to see a good actor's performance, go see it ! It's worthy and out of mainstream movies.