Secrets & Lies

Secrets and Lies is a 1996 movie about a well-to-do black woman who tries to find her birth mother. The film was written and directed by Mike Leigh. Secrets and Lies was nominated for five Oscars and although it did not win any, the film did win numerous other awards. Secrets & Lies took home three BAFTA Awards and several from the Cannes Film Festival.

Cynthia Rose Purley (Brenda Blethyn) is the matriarch of a lower-class, working family. She's had a rough life and lives with her daughter Roxanne (Claire Rushbrook). In the story we also learn that Cynthia raised her brother Maurice (Timothy Spall), whom she never gets to see anymore.

One day Cynthia receives a phone call, from a woman named Hortense Cumberbatch (Marianne Jean-Baptise), who claims to be the daughter she gave up for adoption decades earlier. Cynthia gets worried, but after meeting Hortense, she finds herself believing that the black, well-to-do woman is really her daughter. Together, Cynthia and Hortense face the rest of the family and deal with their past.

• Timothy Spall as Maurice Purley

• Phyllis Logan as Monica Purley

• Brenda Blethyn as Cynthia Rose Purley

• Claire Rushbrook as Roxanne Purley

• Marianne Jean-Baptiste as Hortense Cumberbatch

• Elizabeth Berrington as Jane

• Michele Austin as Dionne

• Lee Ross as Paul

• Lesley Manville as Social Worker

• Ron Cook as Stuart

• Emma Amos as Girl with Scar

• Brian Bovell as Hortense's Brother

"His characters look normal, act normal, chatter, and scream. And even when they choose not to speak, not to give away secrets, they’re still heard."—Norm Schrager, Filmcritic.comhttp://www.filmcritic.com/misc/emporium.nsf/reviews/Secrets-and-Lies

"Rings true with its deliciously ripe moments when people relax and reveal themselves in raw intimacy."—Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practicehttp://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/films/films.php?id=4879

"The upside is that Leigh's direction and the main performances are well up to the movie's ambitions; the downside is that pic simply doesn't need to run 142 minutes."—Derek Elley, Varietyhttp://www.variety.com/review/VE1117905245.html?categoryid=31&cs=1