Un parcours vers une existence un peu plus normale que Coixet illustre avec tact et simplicit en tirant merveilleusement profit de l'immense talent de ses deux interprtes

| Original Score: 7/10 | Jan 29, 2010

Heartache is guaranteed. And so it is in The Secret Life of Words, a strangely beautiful film about an ugly memory that Hanna (Sarah Polley) carries for the rest of her life

| Jul 25, 2008

| Original Score: 2/6 | Sep 22, 2007

Can't resist the meaningful political backstory that will transform her characters into symbols--that is, into ventriloquist dummies rattling off humdrum rhetoric.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | May 3, 2007

Can't hold the weight of its own pretensions.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 2, 2007

The film succeeds mainly as a story of the connective, regenerative tissue between words and silence on the level strength of its listeners.

| Feb 14, 2007

Coixet's screenplay may be a little slow in spots and someof the supporting characters are not very well drawn, but the spotlight is on the two leads, and both Robbins and Polley come through. There's some twee voiceover that mars the film's beginning and

| Original Score: B | Jan 11, 2007

The claustrophobic and artificial atmosphere of the setting is unfortunately matched by the equally artificial drama.

Full Review | Dec 30, 2006

Out in the north sea--no harbor for pain both physical and psychological--except what contact with the right human being may provide in the way of a cure.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 27, 2006

What pleasure there is to be wrung from the exceptionally banal The Secret Life of Words lies in the harsh, unforgiving beauty (lyrically shot by Jean-Claude Larrieu) and wonderfully strange social life of the isolated rig.

Full Review | Dec 22, 2006

Making it work onscreen requires a Herculean effort from the actors, a task to which Polley and Robbins -- as well as their supporting cast -- are more than adequately suited.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 22, 2006

This thing is very, very deep. So deep in fact that getting the bends is a distinct possibility.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.3/5 | Dec 22, 2006

There may be no young actress today better at embodying a blend of wounded innocence and stoic pride than Sarah Polley. In The Secret Life of Words, she has a part worthy of her gifts.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 21, 2006

Though I continue to have strong reservations about the stylistic abstractions in Ms. Coixet's narrative, the performances given by Ms. Polley, Mr. Robbins and Ms. Christie take me a long way in accepting and recommending the whole package.

Full Review | Dec 20, 2006

Director Isabel Croixet creates an intriguing, enclosed world aboard the ship

| Dec 19, 2006

Meditative, slow-paced examination of how post-traumatic stress syndrome affects two troubled people who connect on a windswept oil rig in the Irish Sea.

| Original Score: 6/10 | Dec 19, 2006

Like Ceylan -- like many a fine director -- Coixet has made her film less as a drama than as the traversal of a state of mind, a mood.

Full Review | Dec 15, 2006

In due course skeletons will march out of closets, but the movie yields up its secrets with slow reluctance.

Full Review | Dec 15, 2006

A series of conversations that are sometimes clever and sometimes feel like screenwriting exercises about the details of life, but are always well acted.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 15, 2006

Far from feeling that we've been hoodwinked into watching a film with a strong social message, we can only marvel at how eloquently and incontrovertibly it states its case.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 15, 2006