Review of Secrets & Lies

I remember enduring this bombastic assault on the senses when it initially came out on video following winning a slew of undeserved Oscar nominations. It demonstrates two things clearly. First, that the British can produce films about dysfunctional families that are just as crummy as ones done in the U.S. Second, Oscar voters have a perverse sense of humor. The flimsy plot revolves around a serious-minded adopted black woman who decides to go in search of her birth mother and stumbles into the horrifying central family depicted in the film. The film is basically just a series of character vignettes, loosely connected, that build up to a revelatory dinner sequence, where the mother can sabotage the proceedings and turn herself into a drama queen. Virtually nothing about this film works at all. I observed years ago that the dialog seemed to be made up, haltingly, on the spot by the actors. It came as no surprise to me years later when the cast confirmed just that. It sports the worst musical score in memory - a few melancholy toots on a horn signal the opening and closing of each scene. Marianne Jean-Baptiste is actually quite good as the black daughter. She functions as an island of calm and normalcy amid the overwrought dreck. Timothy Spall seems about ready to fall asleep as the lumpish guy stuck between his whining wife and needy sister. Brenda Blethyn is light years beyond dreadful. She begins or ends every scene in the film in a state of shrieking hysteria. There is not one ounce of subtlety or introspection in her performance. It is a small wonder that the sets could withstand such a severe onslaught of scenery chomping. Only the masochistic would wish to stay around such a character, much less claim they enjoyed watching her antics.