Synopsis
After her adoptive mother dies, Hortense, a successful black optometrist, seeks out her birth mother. She's shocked when her research leads her to a working class white woman, Cynthia.
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Cast
- Brenda BlethynCynthia Rose Purley
- Marianne Jean-BaptisteHortense Cumberbatch
- Timothy SpallMaurice Purley
- Phyllis LoganMonica Purley
- Claire RushbrookRoxanne Purley
- Lee RossPaul
- Lesley ManvilleThe Social Worker
- Elizabeth BerringtonJane
- Michele AustinDionne
- Ron CookStuart
Recommendations
- 100
ReelViews
Represents the director at his best -- unsentimental yet powerful, funny and poignant, and, in the end, undeniably satisfying. - 100
Washington Post
Reveals itself detail by searing detail. - 100
USA Today
Blethyn is so astonishing that you forget you're seeing a performance. - 100
Chicago Tribune
Leigh is an artist not at all blind to the world's darkness and pain. But the generosity and togetherness he and his company show in Secrets and Lies is something the movies -- and the world -- truly need. [25 October 1996, Friday, p.A] - 100
The New Republic
Leigh, the writer, ties up things somewhat neatly and is a touch homiletic. Leigh, the director of cast and camera, is masterly. [Sept. 30, 1996] - 90
Chicago Reader
The acting is so strong--with Spall a particular standout--that you're carried along as by a tidal wave. - 90
Newsweek
The results are wondrous, wrenching and crazily funny to behold. - 90
Time
Rich in humor, pained or frolicking.
