SECRETS AND LIES 1996
A film review by Timothy Voon
Copyright 1997 Timothy Voon
1 :-) for family catharsis
Like most families we carry secrets which are best left behind cobwebs, and we have told lies to help shield us from the painful truth. After years of bitterness and distrust, and generation upon generation of ill feeling and underlying falsities, a sense of brooding contempt and dysfunction results.
This is the subject of this Mike Leigh movie, where the characters are the movie itself. Imagine the scenario of a singe white middle-aged Anglo-Saxon woman, living with her rebellious adult daughter. Her once close, but now distant younger brother has been stolen away by a seemingly cold and resentful sister-in-law. Leigh masterfully portrays this sad and lonely woman, who has apparently failed in every aspect of life, until a beautiful Anglo-African woman, refined and well achieved in the field of optometry, enters her life. To her amazement she discovers that this was the daughter who was given up for adoption many years ago.
Don't snigger. If you dig around your past a little, you may accidentally discover that your dad was an axe murderer, and your sister is actually your mother. God forbid. Weirder things have happened. Muddy waters are stirred, and chaos and confusion ignites in a household already swamped with its fair share of bad weather. What initially appears to be a natural disaster, becomes the catalyst that opens an old festering wound in need of salting.
The climax amounts to a luncheon birthday party, where dusty rugs are aired with more than a cough and a sneeze. With screaming, yelling, crying and finally hugging, Mike Leigh bends this broken family back into the twisted shape of a circle.
Timothy Voon e-mail: stirling@netlink.com.au
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