Secrets and Lies

A family is forced to confront the personal issues they've been avoiding for years in this powerful, realistic drama. Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn) is a working-class British woman whose life has been a long series of painful disappointments. She's single with no romantic prospects and a dead-end job at ...more

Mike Leigh's biggest success in America at the time, 1996's Secrets & Lies was also the closest the renegade director had ever come to fashioning a conventional melodrama. Its universal themes of familial reunion and forgiveness no doubt contributed to its success at the box office -- as well as with the Academy, who nominated it for five Oscars -- but there's no mistaking the unforced, nuanced rhythms of Secrets & Lies for those of a traditional Hollywood tearjerker. As per Leigh's ...more