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Secret Life of Words, The
Generally favorable reviews
Based on 11 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 12 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama | Foreign
Written by: Isabel Coixet
Directed by: Isabel Coixet
Release Date:
Theatrical: December 15, 2006
DVD: May 8, 2007
Running Time: 115 minutes, Color
Origin: Spain
Summary
RATING: Not Rated
Starring Sarah Polley, Tim Robbins, Javier Cámara, Eddie Marsan, Steven Mackintosh, Julie Christie, and Sverre Anker Ousdal
Isabel Coixet's intensely perceptive, cathartic love story is about the need for human interdependence and the power of silence and speech to transcend trauma. (Strand Releasing)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: My Life Without Me
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
TV Guide Ken Fox
Carries an important and timely reminder about the fate of torture victims, so deftly wrapped within a touching and beautifully acted melodrama that the result is the furthest thing from a didactic message movie.
Read Full Review >The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann
Like Ceylan--like many a fine director--Coixet has made her film less as a drama than as the traversal of a state of mind, a mood.
Read Full Review >New York Post V.A. Musetto
Yes, The Secret Life of Words owes much to Lars von Trier's 1999 "Breaking the Waves." But Coixet's riff stands on its own thanks to thoughtful performances by Polley and Robbins.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
Given the physical limitations of their characters, Polley and Robbins give remarkably compelling performances, and though the resolution of their slowly evolving relationship is a bit too pat, it is one you won't soon forget.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Stephen Holden
The exquisitely coordinated performances elicit an empathy as powerful as anything I can remember feeling in a recent film.
Read Full Review >Variety Jonathan Holland
Sarah Polley gives a wonderfully searching performance, as a woman in a state of extreme isolation, in The Secret Life of Words, a compellingly claustrophobic drama set mostly aboard an oil rig.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Jeremy Mathews
A series of conversations that are sometimes clever and sometimes feel like screenwriting exercises about the details of life, but are always well acted.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Lael Loewenstein
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.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Gregory Kirshling
Can a single scene save a movie? An hour and 20 minutes into The Secret Life of Words, Sarah Polley delivers a halting, evocative 10-minute monologue that finally unlocks the mystery behind her guarded character.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir
A tantalizing and beautiful picture made with tremendous integrity, and anchored by two marvelous performances, Isabel Coixet's The Secret Life of Words still, somehow, doesn't quite work.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Ella Taylor
In due course skeletons will march out of closets, but the movie yields up its secrets with slow reluctance.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 8.3 (out of 10) based on 12 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Chad S. gave it a7:
After we hear Hanna(Sarah Polley) tell Josef(Tim Robbins) her story of survival during the Balkan War, some of us may question why she'd volunteer her nursing services on an oil rig, a place that will be populated predominantly by men? Isn't she supposed to be traumatized by the male species? Hannah's occupation as some nondescript factory worker seems like a custom fit for her life's agenda of complete anonymity, because it's egalitarian and the monotonous nature of this sort of job neutralizes a person's strengths and weaknesses. The uniform aids her invisibility because it desexualizes herself, as well as the other women and men. But then Hanna is forced to go on vacation by management. Exactly why she wants to be an individual again(a nurse, a person who stands alone) is never made clear. We know Hannah is alone, but that's her choice. There's also a certain oddness in Hannah's decision to confess her traumatic past to Josef, her patient, who helped inspire a friend to self-immolate due to his sexual indiscretion. In spite of her painful experiences with men, she's attracted to a bad boy. Why not fall in love with the nice marine biologist who wants to save all the sea creatures? He's kind of blind, too(like Josef due to the fire). He's more interested in the sea than this beautiful girl. Still, Sarah Polley and Tim Robbins have chemistry, which is important to help stave off the claustrophobia of a largely one-setting movie.
Rich P. gave it an8:
I could easily have slipped out of the movie within the first 20 minutes and missed a very thought provoking and emotionally rendering film. The slow start was the means to obtain an initial reading of the Hanna's character and my reading was that I did not like to be around her. Tim Robbins character on the other hand starts out as glib and carefree as his bed confinement would allow him and from this vantage point you see the two characters wind around each other's emotional weaknesses in an unwanted type of collaboration. Patience and thoughtfulness are required to really be taken up by the film. I don't know if I really enjoyed its viewing as much as the following conversations with friends about the movie's development.
