Variety
Sarah Polley gives a wonderfully searching performance, as a woman in a state of extreme isolation, in The Secret Life of Words, a compellingly claustrophobic drama set mostly aboard an oil rig...
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The Secret Life of Words
An enigmatic European factory worker called Hanna drifts through her day with her hearing aid switched off to avoid connecting with the world. Forced to take a break by her supervisor after ten years of working without a vacation, Hanna finds another job as a nurse on an oil rig. Her sole patient is a flirtatious, life-loving burns victim, played by Tim Robbins in charismatic form. As Hanna gradually adjusts to her new surroundings, finding kindred spirits among the oil rig's eccentric and isolated crew, her shell begins to crack.
Lina Mangiacapre Award winner at Venice Film Festival 2005.
2007Rating: M, content may disturb115 minsSpainEnglish
Drama
- Director:
- Isabel Coixet ('My Life Without Me', 'Paris, je t'aime')
- Writer:
- Isabel Coixet
- Cast:
- Sarah PolleyTim RobbinsSverre Anker OusdalJavier CámaraJulie Christie
The Secret Life of Words / Reviews
The New York Times
The exquisitely coordinated performances elicit an empathy as powerful as anything I can remember feeling in a recent film...
Full reviewSalon
A tantalizing and beautiful picture made with tremendous integrity, and anchored by two marvelous performances, Isabel Coixet's The Secret Life of Words still, somehow, doesn't quite work...
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Film Threat
A series of conversations that are sometimes clever and sometimes feel like screenwriting exercises about the details of life, but are always well acted...
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