Writer-director Isabel Coixet's (My Life Without Me) beautifully wrought chamber drama The Secret Life of Words opens on Hanna (Sarah Polley), a laconic, backward and introverted girl in her early '30s, quietly drowning in her own isolation. Partially deaf from working an untold number of hours in a loud factory, Hanna must wear a hearing aid. When her supervisors -- deeply concerned about the four years that have lapsed in Hanna's life without a break -- force her to go on holiday for a month,
she hesitantly takes off for a coastal village in the north of Ireland. Once there, she decides to dine in a local restaurant, and overhears, by chance, a telephone conversation conducted by Victor (Eddie Marsan), regarding an accident on a nearby oil rig that he precipitated, which left a victim, Josef (Tim Robbins) in its wake. Hanna tells Victor that she is a nurse, and is instantly flown to the rig to treat the bedbound Josef -- temporarily blind from extensive cornea damage, and his body blanketed with severe burns. She also encounters the structure's motley and eccentric band of workers -- from ecologist Martin (Daniel Mays), who spends his time studying mutated mussels that collect on the ship's base and the waves that strike the side of the rig, to Josef, to chef Simon (Javier Camára), who prepares "gourmet" food no one else can stand, to Dimitri (Sverre Anker Ousdal), an elderly gentleman who is as much of a loner as Hanna. As Hanna begins to foresee a new place for herself among these individuals, a relationship gradually develops between Hanna and Josef, who holds his new friend rapt with lyrical, evocative, magisterial tales from his past -- unknowingly drawing Hanna, one step at a time, toward inner joy, self-expression, and revelation of her own sad and complex story. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi
There may be no young actress today better at embodying a blend of wounded innocence and stoic pride than Sarah Polley. In The Secret Life of Words, she has a part worthy of her gifts.
Though I continue to have strong reservations about the stylistic abstractions in Ms. Coixet's narrative, the performances given by Ms. Polley, Mr. Robbins and Ms. Christie take me a long way in accepting and recommending the whole package.
Un parcours vers une existence un peu plus normale que Coixet illustre avec tact et simplicité en tirant merveilleusement profit de l'immense talent de ses deux interprètes
Heartache is guaranteed. And so it is in The Secret Life of Words, a strangely beautiful film about an ugly memory that Hanna (Sarah Polley) carries for the rest of her life
Can't resist the meaningful political backstory that will transform her characters into symbols--that is, into ventriloquist dummies rattling off humdrum rhetoric.
Coixet's screenplay may be a little slow in spots and someof the supporting characters are not very well drawn, but the spotlight is on the two leads, and both Robbins and Polley come through. There's some twee voiceover that mars the film's beginning and
Out in the north sea--no harbor for pain both physical and psychological--except what contact with the right human being may provide in the way of a cure.
What pleasure there is to be wrung from the exceptionally banal The Secret Life of Words lies in the harsh, unforgiving beauty (lyrically shot by Jean-Claude Larrieu) and wonderfully strange social life of the isolated rig.
Making it work onscreen requires a Herculean effort from the actors, a task to which Polley and Robbins -- as well as their supporting cast -- are more than adequately suited.
Grim slow moving talk piece with excellent performances but a sense of hopelessness lingers after.
September 24, 2007
jay nixon
Super Reviewer
This very calm, quiet drama tells the story of a young laconic woman working at a factory without having much of a life, being forced to take some time off for vacation where she happens to overhear an oil platform being in need of a nurse. Instead of relaxing she takes care of a burn victim (Tim Robbins) who is is
slowly recovering from an accident there. As she is slowly making contact with her flirty patient and the minimum crew there, she carefully seems to come out from her shell. Sarah Polley is really convincing as tortured soul with a dark secret, that is going to get revealed in the end, in a pretty gloomy and almost painful story to listen to. The fact that the movie doesn't end in despair right there but takes the tale a little further, where hope is still an option, makes it really rewarding in the end. Fine acting, an interesting and moving story, an all around convincing romance / drama.
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