European Films

After portraying a terminally ill patient who keeps her condition a secret from her loved ones in My Life Without Me, Canadian actress Sarah Polley again reunites with Isabel Coixet for the Catalan director’s second English language film called La vida secreta de las palabras (The Secret Life of Words). Polley plays Hanna, a complex foreign woman with a dark past who breaks away from her established routine when on a whim she decides to pass a few weeks on an oil rig as a nurse to Josef (Tim Robbins), who was badly burnt in a fire on the rig and who cannot be moved because of his injuries. The acquaintance and developing relationship between the nurse Hanna, who is deaf and needs a hearing aid, and the temporarily blind Josef is at the heart of the film. The rough oil worker is confined to his room as Hanna is confined to the rig, which has been partially shut down after the accident. Both have secrets they are trying to hide; Hanna by not talking and Josef by talking too much.

 

 

In the perceptive script written the director, the film explores both characters with an insight in human nature that My Life Without Me sorely lacked; as a character study of two damaged people it works perfectly and the revelations of the latter half of the film cunningly enlarge the themes of words unspoken to include not only the history of the two protagonists, but more generally the history of the world and the way in which humankind can easily forget or conceal events that should be remembered.

 

For Coixet as a writer and a director, The Secret Life of Words is a marked improvement on My Life Without Me; her characters act and speak like hurt human beings would and their hesitant search for comfort in each other despite their faults rings true. Polley has grown as an actress as well and gives a full bodied performance opposite Tim Robbins, who has the graceless task of acting only with his voice since his character is blind and cannot move from his bed because of his injuries; needless to say his performance is pitch-perfect.

 

When the film leaves the intimacy of the oil rig towards the end, La vida secreta de las palabras noticeably looses steam, but the coda is necessary for the completion of Coixet’s message regarding the protagonists as well as the film’s general underlying themes. A jazz soundtrack, a mysterious voice-over and the constant background noises of the oil rig belie the true force of The Secret Life of Words, which, as would be appropriate, is encapsulated almost completely in its strong dialogues.

 

 

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