The Secret Life of Words

As usually, the European production shows the emotional range Hollywood can most of the time only dream of. Another sad, yet also optimistic movie about the cruelty that humans are capable of and the love that they can display at the same time. Ironic, isn't it?

A bit too predictable and emotionally distant to really grab me, so when the emotional reveals came they didn't affect me as much as I had hoped. Gets better in the second half, but it felt like a bit of a struggle to get there.

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very poor and extremely annoying movie. several of the directorial decisions appeared to be designed specifically to irritate me.

Sarah Polley's accent was distractingly bad and it wasn't as effective as it seemed to think it was, but despite that and the fact it was annoyingly manipulative and cheesy at times, it was still highly enjoyable. I didn't really 'care' about the characters, but I did like seeing them interact. I actually liked the minor characters as well and wanted more focus on them, but they weren't relevant to anything.

deep

Some really wonderful material here, sabotaged somewhat by the director's style. The scenes between Sarah Polley and the great Tim Robbins are fantastic--they achieve an intense, almost naked intimacy that is striking, yet the jiggling of the hand-held camera dissipates the intensity in a most unwelcome manner. And Ms. Coixet seems to have NO idea how to end a scene. Still, there's more than enough beauty to compensate--even for the awful, embarrassing narration that opens and closes the movie.

Sad story but really good to watch - makes you realize how easy it is for those of us not affected by some horrific tragedy move on - but others are scared for life.