Secrets & Lies

If you don’t know how Mike Leigh makes movies, run a search on him across the Internet and read up on it. It’s quite interesting. Basically, he starts without a script and focuses on the characters and the basic plot idea. He and the actors flesh out the specifics of the script and of the details of their characters. The result is that Leigh’s movies have vivid, realistic characters, and that’s definitely true of Secrets & Lies. The movie is simple, in that there are no contrived plot twists to push the action along. The only tension comes from Leigh’s presentation of the characters and the plot (the characters know what is going on sooner than we do). Secrets & Lies is a rich and interesting character study. Go see it.