Secrets & Lies (1996)

• Year: 1996
• Released: 28 Feb 1997
• Country: United Kingdom, France
• Adwords: Nominated for 5 Oscars. 36 wins & 47 nominations total
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117589/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/secrets_lies
• Metacritics: https://www.metacritic.com/movie/secrets-lies
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: English
• MPA Rating: R
• Genre: Comedy, Drama
• Runtime: 136 min
• Writer: Mike Leigh
• Director: Mike Leigh
• Cast: Timothy Spall, Brenda Blethyn, Phyllis Logan
• Keywords: parent child relationship, london, england, secret, adoption, reunion,

	8.0/10
	91/100

Secrets & Lies Storyline

Following the passing of her adoptive mother, London based optometrist Hortense Cumberbatch believes it is a good time to find out the identity of her birth mother, something that is now the right of adopted adult children in Britain which was not the case when she was given up for adoption in 1968. Her biological mother’s name is Cynthia Purley, the most shocking news among the adoption papers for Hortense being that Cynthia is white, while Hortense is black. Despite the questions Hortense has for Cynthia, she isn’t sure what to do with any of the information. If Hortense does proceed with contacting Cynthia, she will find that she is walking into a firestorm of dysfunction that exists between members of the Purley family. Cynthia, an uneducated factory worker who on first thought wouldn’t even remember sleeping with a black man, has only two blood relatives: her younger brother Maurice Purley, who owns a successful photography business, and her daughter Roxanne Purley, who works for the council as a street cleaner. Roxanne, on the cusp of her twenty-first birthday, is an angry and unambitious young woman, most of that anger directed at her mother. She treats Maurice like the father she never had – her biological father’s identity which Cynthia has never told her – and thus Maurice’s wife, Monica Purley, like the mother she wished she had. Maurice and Monica can treat Roxanne like a daughter especially since they have no children of their own. Controlling Monica has made Maurice cut day-to-day ties with Cynthia due to Monica seeing Cynthia as flighty and irresponsible, that view in part because of Cynthia getting pregnant when she was fifteen with who ended up being Hortense. No one has ever told Roxanne that she is Cynthia’s second child. That severing of ties means that Maurice and Monica have not invited either Cynthia or Roxanne to the new house they’ve owned for a year, redecorating it to her exacting standards being Monica’s focus in life. The question then becomes what will happen between Hortense and Cynthia not if but when Hortense contacts her which she has decided to do, and how that will affect the interpersonal relationships between all the family members now including Hortense.

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Secrets & Lies Movie Reviews

“secrets” beyond the door

For a while there, we’d sort of considered Mike Leigh’s movies slow, but “Secrets & Lies” showed him to be a good director. It portrays a family in England who all of a sudden start finding out various things about each other, some of which shock them royally! I’d never heard of Brenda Blethyn before this movie came out, but she showed herself to be a great actress here, and did again in “Saving Grace”.

I guess that the point is that we’ve all got a few skeletons in our closet. This movie takes a great look at such issues. Also starring Timothy Spall, Phyllis Logan, Claire Rushbrook and Marianne Jean-Baptiste (whom you may remember from “The Cell”).

humanity in the performances

Hortense Cumberbatch (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) is a black optometrist in London. She has known that she was adopted since she was 7. With the death of her mother, she sets out to find her birth mom. She’s shocked to be told that her birth mother is white. Cynthia Purley (Brenda Blethyn) lives with her daughter Roxanne. They are constantly fighting. Paul is Roxanne’s boyfriend. Cynthia’s brother Maurice Purley (Timothy Spall) is a portrait and wedding photographer. He’s married to Monica. Jane is his assistant. It’s all “secrets & lies” at Roxanne’s 21st birthday party.

Mike Leigh creates another compelling story of the downtrodden. He is an expert in bringing these characters to life. In this one, he is gifted with two great performers, Brenda Blethyn and Timothy Spall. Blethyn has the more showy role. Spall has a quiet humanity. These characters are unforgettable.

A Morality Tale?

A successful black woman (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) traces her birth mother to a lower-class white woman (Brenda Blethyn), who denies it; emotions run high as everyone’s secrets are exposed.

What I love about this film is that it makes a point about race and class, but not in the same way that an American film probably would. In America, there is a tendency to see race and ignore class, when it could be that the latter is the bigger problem. Here, we have a racial divide, and also a class divide — but the class divide is the reverse of what we might expect.

Roger Ebert wrote that “moment after moment, scene after scene, Secrets & Lies unfolds with the fascination of eavesdropping”. I had not noticed it at the time, but it is quite true. These are intimate moments in the lives of a family, things that we would never see…