La Vida secreta de las palabras (The Secret Life of Words) poster & wallpaper

Eddie Marsan, Javier Cámara, Sarah Polley

An isolated spot in the middle of the sea. An oil rig, where all the workers are men, on which there has been an accident. A solitary, mysterious woman who is trying to forget her past is brought to t...( read more  read more... )he rig to look after a man who has been temporarily blinded. A strange intimacy develops between them, a link full of secrets, truths, lies, humor and pain, from which neither of them will emerge unscathed and which will change their lives forever. This is a film about the weight of the past; about the sudden silence that is produced before a storm; about 25 million waves, a Spanish cook and a goose. And, above all else, it's about the power of love even in the most terrible circumstances.

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89% liked it

5,541 ratings

Critics

69% liked it

37 critics

Unrated, 1 hr. 52 min.

Directed by: Isabel Coixet

Release Date: December 15, 2006

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Flixster Reviews (472)

  • ironclad1609
    February 16, 2009
    ironclad1609
    This very calm, quiet drama tells the story of a young laconic woman working at a factory without having much of a life, being forced to take some time off for vacation where she happens to overhear an oil platform being in need of a nurse. Instead of relaxing she takes care of a...( read more) burn victim (Tim Robbins) who is is slowly recovering from an accident there. As she is slowly making contact with her flirty patient and the minimum crew there, she carefully seems to come out from her shell. Sarah Polley is really convincing as tortured soul with a dark secret, that is going to get revealed in the end, in a pretty gloomy and almost painful story to listen to. The fact that the movie doesn't end in despair right there but takes the tale a little further, where hope is still an option, makes it really rewarding in the end. Fine acting, an interesting and moving story, an all around convincing romance / drama.
  • EarthlyAlien
    January 9, 2009
    EarthlyAlien
    "Before the holocaust, Adolf Hitler called all of his collaborators together and in order to convince them that he could get away with his plan he asked them "who remembers the extermination of the Armenians?" That's what he said. Thirty years later nobody remembered the milli...( read more)on Armenians exterminated in the cruelest possible way."

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    In acting, as in life, the ability to listen is perennially underrated. A talented actor's gifts are sometimes deemed mysterious, but often it's less look-at-me line readings than an authentic relationship with the world - more critically the sounds, the words - surrounding him or her that reveal character, forge connection. Perhaps we all wish to be listened to so well, with such passion; in acting, as in life, a good listener evokes an almost primal response. Sarah Polley and Tim Robbins are challenged, in Isabel Coixet's second English-language film, The Secret Life of Words, to develop a connection during long dialogues in which Polley, playing a nearly deaf nurse more comfortable with her hearing aid turned off, listens with her eyes and her fingertips, while Robbins, a burn patient temporarily blind from his injuries, is keenly attuned to her silences - more frequent than her words - listening with the set of his mouth, twist of his neck, and the quick lines fanning at his cheeks.

    As Hanna, Polley uses her million mile eyes to suggest the stillness and the silence of her character's existence, which can be mapped out in the footsteps between her home and her factory job, precisely controlled portions of her meals, and stacks of almond-scented soap - one for every wash - lining her bathroom. The tight cask of silence is a comfort to the girl, it seems, and she defends it with the tenacity of the gravely wounded; though she speaks with an Eastern-European accent, Hanna lives in Ireland, and when her boss, unnerved by her 10 straight years of uninterrupted service, demands she take a month's vacation, she is at a loss as to how to exist outside the confines of routine.

    Through a rather convoluted series of events - moreso when we learn her history - Hanna finds herself on an oil rig in the middle of the ocean, the only woman among a crew of men recovering from an on-site fire which killed one worker and badly injured Josef, played by Robbins. Hanna, a former nurse, volunteers to tend to Josef until he can be moved to the shore, and finds him to be a willing, if voluble, patient; there is clearly more life in Josef, blinded and burned raw, than there has been in Hanna for quite some time. The rig, a bleak palette of inky greys and fresh rust, is also populated by an ambitious Chilean cook, a shy oceanographer, a reclusive foreman and a pair of workers who may or may not be lovers.

    The Secret Life of Words could have been two different films, using the same actors and characters, thatched together into a contrasting mellifluous whole. During the first half the mood is as hazy as the mist and clouds that permeate the screen; as mysterious as its quietly solemn subject. Coixet gives virtually no background information about her protagonist, begrudgingly letting small titbits go as the dialogue requires it. Enjoying the mystery, and knowing Coixet's early Spanish films (which were essentially dramas about broken-hearted people), I thought the film might centre around the exploration of Hanna's interior existence as she'd tenuously moved through the concrete world of the oil rig. However this was not to be.

    The Secret Life of Words' back end funnels the plot through a sharply focused narrative which highlights Hanna's previously ambiguous behaviour and motivations. Yet this is no Shyamalanesque serpentine thriller, designed to impress us with its cleverness. Rather the interplay of relationships is what counts here; specific plot details serve only to give these interactions context and weight without overtaking them. The film centres on the hope of rediscovery when life has buried, beyond sight, your very person.

    Robbins, hitting unlikely, deeply romantic grace notes with another pint-sized blonde (see Michael Winterbottom's brilliant and underappreciated Code 46, with Samantha Morton), has a sweetly hulking quality (even when bedridden) and a stubborn bloom of a face; combined, in Josef, with an all-American bawdiness, his desperation to draw Hanna out is magnetic. Polley is the soul of conflicted restraint as Hanna, sizing up her compulsively chatty opponent: it's not that she doesn't have the words he seeks, if facetiously; indeed, they have been living the secret life of the title inside of her. Somehow Josef, harbouring a secret of his own, provides both the perfect storm and safe harbour for Hanna and the unspeakable words she has to share.

    Victor: "He doesn't like to be with the others. He's a loner, too.
    Hanna: There are many of us."
  • sapphirechaos05
    April 29, 2008
    sapphirechaos05
    touching movie..another winner for tim robbins
  • puffchunk
    February 4, 2008
    puffchunk
    Tim Robbins had great dialog in this film (until the ending). A burn victim on an oil rig in the ocean, who falls in love with his war-refugee nurse Sarah Polley who shows him her cut up boobs. Turned out to be pretty great.
  • SilentWarProductions2009
    September 27, 2007
    SilentWarProductions2009
    Directed by: Isabel Coixet.
    Starring: Sarah Polley, Tim Robbins.

    I had heard prier to watching this film that the audience is split down the middle, some who say is intellectual, complex and very powerful and others say its hollow.....I don't quite ag...( read more)ree with either of those, I'm somewhere in the middle.

    The story starts with an oil rig accident in the middle of the sea, a man is badly burnt and requires a new nurse. Then we are introduced to Hannah, a very quiet, strange, solitary woman who works in a factory, she is never late and never has had a holiday in years, when the boss gives her the offer to take one, she refuses, instead she overhears about the nurse position in a bar and she takes it. Hannah tends to this man, Josef and he slowly breaks her silence. I personally felt that director/writer Isabel Coixet ruined the chance to make the film more than what it is, maybe I just found it hard to latch onto her narrative. I can't deny the movie shared a few shocking and unexpected powerful and moving moments, but I had a problem adapting to these characters for the first half of the film and with the pace moving slowly, I could never grasp on enough to really feel for the later scenes. The acting is top notch, Tim Robbins proves to be strong and quite humorous with the dialogue he is given and Sarah Polley deserves to be more recognised, she delivers a subtle and complex performance, when the moment is needed for her character, she delivers brilliantly.

    Many will like this film, I'm not saying I hate it, but I never grasped onto the film in the first half due to dull characters and a slow pace and when it did pick up in the second half and the characters pack a punch, it just wasn't enough for me to love. Disappointed.
  • jjnxn
    November 19, 2009
    jjnxn
    Grim slow moving talk piece with excellent performances but a sense of hopelessness lingers after.
  • bluemoon81
    June 19, 2009
    bluemoon81
    A movie about trust and pain. Moved me to tears...
  • Soundsofmadness
    April 10, 2009
    Soundsofmadness
    No thanks - Not interested
  • nunatuna
    March 13, 2009
    nunatuna
    Full of beauty and sorrow. Impressed me a lot making me think of the meaning of life and love.
  • MandyDarko
    February 17, 2009
    MandyDarko
    El comienzo de una historia de amor entre dos personas que llevan mucho dolor dentro de si y que estan acostumbradas a la soledad. Tiene buenos diálogos y conmueve.

View All La Vida secreta de las palabras (The Secret Life of Words) Reviews

Critic Reviews

December 12, 2006
Marcy Dermansky, About.com

The most satisfying romance of 2006. full review

View more La Vida secreta de las palabras (The Secret Life of Words) reviews at RottenTomatoes.com

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