A young black woman seeks out her family history and gets drawn into the suppressed, emotionally complex lives of her birth mother and her extended family. In terms of plot, that's about it. Nothing really 'exciting' happens. It's just a story about people and how they relate to each other. But that doesn't mean it isn't dramatic, or absorbing. It is.
Mike Leigh's record in character-based films is rightly legendary. He knows exactly how to do this. But it only works if the performances are excellent. And on the whole, these are.
To start with the main drawback, Phyllis Logan's accent grates with me. Her character is supposed to be Scottish, but the accent doesn't work at all. And I'm afraid, for me, this detracts a little from her character, which is probably one of the weakest in the film anyway.
But it is more than made up for by the superb performances of Timothy Spall, Brenda Blethyn and Marianne Jean-Baptiste. It's not often when watching a film that you develop a strong opinion of a character at the beginning which is completely changed by the end. Blethyn does that here: her character was intensely annoying to me at first (almost made me switch off in fact). But by the end I felt quite differently. And that's down to Blethyn and Leigh.
There's a couple of scene-stealing minor cameos to look out for too. One is by Lesley Manville, playing the social worker who starts Hortense (Jean-Baptiste) on her search for her real mother. The other is by Ron Cook, as the failed emigrant who once sold Maurice (Spall) his photography business. Both are only on screen for a few minutes, but leave a lasting impression and are the kind of strikingly 'real' human characters that these kind of films are all about.
At 2hrs 40 minutes 'Secrets and Lies' is a bit of a marathon. But it needs to be - and it repays your patience. If you stay till the end you will have seen a very good film.
Mike Leigh's record in character-based films is rightly legendary. He knows exactly how to do this. But it only works if the performances are excellent. And on the whole, these are.
To start with the main drawback, Phyllis Logan's accent grates with me. Her character is supposed to be Scottish, but the accent doesn't work at all. And I'm afraid, for me, this detracts a little from her character, which is probably one of the weakest in the film anyway.
But it is more than made up for by the superb performances of Timothy Spall, Brenda Blethyn and Marianne Jean-Baptiste. It's not often when watching a film that you develop a strong opinion of a character at the beginning which is completely changed by the end. Blethyn does that here: her character was intensely annoying to me at first (almost made me switch off in fact). But by the end I felt quite differently. And that's down to Blethyn and Leigh.
There's a couple of scene-stealing minor cameos to look out for too. One is by Lesley Manville, playing the social worker who starts Hortense (Jean-Baptiste) on her search for her real mother. The other is by Ron Cook, as the failed emigrant who once sold Maurice (Spall) his photography business. Both are only on screen for a few minutes, but leave a lasting impression and are the kind of strikingly 'real' human characters that these kind of films are all about.
At 2hrs 40 minutes 'Secrets and Lies' is a bit of a marathon. But it needs to be - and it repays your patience. If you stay till the end you will have seen a very good film.