Secrets & Lies
Director: Mike Leigh
Year: 1996
Country: UK/France
Duration: 142 mins
Rating: 15
Cast: Brenda Blethyn, Claire Rushbrook, Timothy Spall, Phyllis Logan, Marianne Jean-Baptiste
More information (external website)
A family is forced to confront the personal issues they've been avoiding for years in this powerful, realistic drama. Cynthia is a working-class British woman whose life has been a long series of painful disappointments. She is single with no romantic prospects and a dead-end job at a box factory. Her daughter Roxanne works as a street sweeper and is chronically bitter. Cynthia helped raise her brother Maurice, who is doing well as a photographer, but she rarely sees him and usually blames his wife, Monica. One day, Cynthia receives a phone call from a woman named Hortense, who claims to be the daughter Cynthia put up for adoption years ago. Cynthia initially reacts with panic, but she agrees to meet Hortense and is surprised to discover that she is a successful and soft-spoken eye doctor — and that she is black. Cynthia is soon convinced that Hortense is just who she claims to be, and they quickly form a friendship that gives Cynthia a new source of emotional strength. However, when Cynthia decides to introduce the family to her new "friend," it forces them to confront the lies and evasions that have kept them apart all these years.
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