Secrets & Lies [IMPORT]

Rating:
Summary: Great Movie, Awful DVD, Amazon...What Were You Thinking?
Review: Secrets and Lies is a wonderful movie....one of the very best of the '90s. Mike Leigh is a remarkable talent and he brings out stellar performances from this superb, little known cast. I give the movie 5 stars. This DVD edition, however, is quite awful. Produced in Hong Kong, the video quality is inferior and prominent Chinese subtitles which cannot be removed prove very distracting. Although I'd love to have this movie in my DVD library, the poor quality of the DVD will require me to return it. Amazon, I can rely on you to send me high quality goods, however in this case you have failed. This DVD is not up to your high standards.

Rating:
Summary: DO NOT BUY THIS DVD!
Review: Whatever you do, do not buy this horrible, "IMPORTED" edition of this fine film. What Amazon forgets to mention in its "technical information" section is that this is an import from China! That means the text on the DVD's case is written almost exclusively in Chinese. Also--and much more importantly--this DVD has Chinese subtitles that you can not get rid of. Additionally, the sound and image are well beyond subpar; the VHS edition is cleaner.

So unless you're a collector of imported DVD's, do not buy this DVD!

Rating:
Summary: DVD Problem
Review: Secrets & Lies is a fabulous movie but the DVD, which is "imported" has large subtitles in CHINESE that cannot be made to go away. Very distracting. Please get a "clean" DVD and I will re-order.

Rating:
Summary: Mike Leigh's alrmingly realistic view of Britain
Review: To say that this film is drama is one thing. To say it is British drama is something entirely different. There is something about Mike Leigh's work that captures British life so well that it's almost too close-to-home to find comfortable. But, then again, and at the same time, it can be hilariously funny, gripping and wholly entertaining. The lifestyles of the characters, intertwined or not, are so believable that you can get totally drawn-in to the story's simple, but desperately effective plot. Every funny moment in this film stems from what is basically day-to-day living that anyone would normally over-look as humour, but when it's laid out in front of you in it's most base form, becomes hilarious in the extreme. I have a feeling that more Britsih people rather than American will fully appreciate the humourous implications of much of this film, but I could be pleasently proven wrong. The drama in this film is the flip-side of the coin, but it is just as potent and realistic as the humour. The inter-relationship between the mother and her long-lost daughter (who just decides to introduce herself out of the blue), is tender and, at first, very tense. This tension is also aparent between the mother and her younger, but clearly much more successful, brother, and also his neurotic wife. Perhaps the tension is here because that is the kind of tension you can find in so many 'broken' British households. Or perhaps Mike Leigh has just tapped into what is an untold, if not blatantly obvious truth about any household and any family.
The acting in this film is spot-on, with Brenda Blethyn and Leigh regular Timothy Spall putting on yet more great performances scene after scene. Being British, maybe this isn't so difficult for them; to portray Brit life in it's most basic state? Who knows. Another fine performance in the film is Ron Cook in a small cameo as the alcoholic ex-owner of Tim Spall's photography studio. Cook's charatcer provides a small, well-earned break from the film's deep main story, but also adds a slight melancholy as the characters that witness the arrival of him find themselves looking back on their own lives or successes in different ways. All of this seems to tie in well with the grand finale of the film, where the emotion, family tension, secrets and lies all reach their devastating peak. Watch, and adore.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best films of 1996
Review: This very emotional movie is quite good. I found myself actually caring about the characters and wanting to see what happens to them next. I loved the casting and the cinematography was very well done. An all around great film bested only by Fargo, Breaking the Waves, and the English Patient in 1996.

Rating:
Summary: SUBTLE, BRILLIANT
Review: Apart from listening to the supremely annoying voice of Brenda Blethyn this film is perfect. It is not overdrawn, overlong, or too far out of the realm of reality. The story is unusual, the script is well written, the cast is very down to earth seeming (which is something special about British films. Real people seem to populate the cast rather than out of this world beauties). Blethyn is excellent in her role as a beleaguered single mother, rather ditzy,...and not overly bright. She struggles to make ends meet and to take care of her daughter, who is also not the most pleasant person to get along with. A second storyline focuses on Blethyn’s character’s brother, Maurice, who is a photographer. He is heartbroken because he and his wife have done everything in the world to try to have children but cannot. They are the only other two people in the world, besides Blethyn, who know that Blethyn once gave birth to a child (when she was barely a teen herself) which she gave up for adoption. One day a woman named Hortense phones Blethyn and tells her that she is the daughter Blethyn once gave up for adoption. Blethyn is horrified, and this starts her emotional roller coaster and her awakening a whole host of new feelings about this daughter. They start up a relationship, but only after Blethyn is reluctantly forced to conquer the fact that this abandoned daughter is black. At first she is incredulous and refuses to believe it and says she never had sex with a black man, but she has a breakdown when she realises she did. It is not clearly spelled out for us (which is another fabulous aspect of foreign films which leave much to the viewer’s conjecture) but it is alluded to that Blethyn may have been raped by Hortense’s father. Blethyn hides the relationship with Hortense from the daughter she has reared and also from her brother and his wife, until she invites Hortense to a birthday party for her younger daughter and introduces her as a friend from work. Eventually Blethyn breaks down and cries (as she often does throughout the movie, which lends emotional credibility but is incredibly hard on the ears) and confesses that Hortense is her daughter. This creates a huge amount of turmoil but all turns out all right in the end. A beautifully written film and worth viewing.

Rating:
Summary: excellant film with many reasons to watch it
Review: i found the movie was incredibly moving with all the issues it brought to light. It has a great impact on how people view issues such as race and class. i feel mike leigh addressed these views in careful and sympathetic way. so in conclusion i feel its a mood felt and interesting movie.

Rating:
Summary: So many excellent reasons to see this stunning film
Review: I find it impossible to recommend this movie strongly enough. I recently saw it for the first time, and oddly enough knew next to nothing about it. A year or so ago I saw TOPSY-TURVY with some friends, and they were raving about Mike Leigh as a filmmaker. So, when looking through my local video store for something new and intersting to view, two names jumped out at me from the box: Mike Leigh and Brenda Blethyn, whose performance in LITTLE VOICE had impressed me greatly.

I absolutely loved TOPSY-TURVY, but I am not sure but that SECRETS AND LIES is the stronger film. Less flashy, and I can easily imagine someone who does not enjoy dealing exclusively with interpersonal dynamics not particularly enjoying this. But for anyone who can appreciate an intense family drama, this film will be tough to top.

But the thing that most impressed me about SECRETS AND LIES is the acting. Brenda Blethyn was even better here than she was in LITTLE VOICE. In fact, I honestly do not know of any performance by an actor or actress anywhere that I can say is demonstrably better. I just sat in front of my VCR agog at her performance. I later read that she won the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival, the British Academy Awards, and the Golden Globe Awards. The only award she failed to win was the Oscar, for which she was nominated, but which went instead to Frances MacDormand in FARGO. I loved FARGO and thought MacDormand did a great job, but if you watch these two performances side by side, you gain additional proof that the voters for the Oscars either do not watch all the films or see this as a sort of popularity contest. Frances MacDormand's performance was cute and her accent was convincing, but Brenda Blethyn's performance was the emotional equivalent of a fist to the guts. Brenda Blethyn should have swept all the acting awards that year with ease. I honestly do not remember a performance anywhere in which so much genuine, intense, and overwhelming emotion is projected. If you have not seen this movie, you owe it to yourself just to see Brenda Blethyn inconceivably great performance.

I was also pleased to see Timothy Spall again, who did such an excellent job of playing so sympathetically Richard Temple (the actor who created the title role in THE MIKAIDO) in TOPSY-TURVY. I have not seen him in every many roles, but after seeing him perform so well in these two very, very different roles, I very much want to see him again.

Rating:
Summary: Does the truth really hurt??
Review: A sincere English production about a successful middle-class black lady,Hortense looking for her birth mother,Cynthia who turned out to be white and lower-class. Secrets were uncover and lies were being told. Eventually lead to discovering everybody's darkest secrets and all those white lies.

Mike Leigh wrote this brilliant script and with skillful direction made this film unique and realistic. Brenda Blethyn gave an excellent,flawless performance as Cynthia Rose Purley. With creditable supporting casts like Marianne Jean-Baptiste as Hortense, Timothy Spall as Maurice Purley etc..

This compelling movie made me wonder--"Does the truth really hurt"?? It also showed the importance of family support,love and care.

Rating:
Summary: Funny, realistic, and ultamately heart warming. A must see!
Review: The Brits really have a way of telling stories with blunt humor and realistic situations. This is for sure the case with Mike Leigh's film 'Secrets And Lies'. This is a story about none other than secrets and lies, and the consequences they bring. Cynthia Rose Purly is a single mother living in London with her twentyish year old daughter Roxanne. Their relationship begins to crumble due to a lack of communication and built up agression from past events. Cynthia's secret is her first born daughter, Hortense, who was given up for adoption shortly after birth. Emotions rise when Hortense successfully finds Cynthia, leading to a climactic revealing and resolving of every characters secrets and lies. Brenda Blethyn is amazing as Cynthia Purly. Don't miss this cinematical gem.