Secrets & Lies (1996) [Criterion Collection]

Director: Mike Leigh
Writer: Mike Leigh
Stars: Timothy Spall, Brenda Blethyn, Phyllis Logan

An expert observer of unembellished humanity, writer-director Mike Leigh reached new levels of expressive power and intricacy with this exploration of the deceptions, small and large, that shape our relationships. When Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), a Black optometrist who was adopted as a child, begins the search for her birth mother, she doesn’t expect that it will lead her to Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn, winner of the Cannes Film Festival’s best actress award), a lonely white factory worker whose tentative embrace of her long-lost daughter sends shock waves through the rest of her already fragile family. Born from a painstaking process of rehearsal and improvisation with a powerhouse ensemble cast, Secrets & Lies is a Palme d’Or–winning tour de force of sustained tension and catharsis that lays bare the emotional fault lines running beneath everyday lives.

Extras:
- New 2K digital restoration, approved by director Mike Leigh and director of photography Dick Pope, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- New conversation between Leigh and composer Gary Yershon
- New conversation between actor Marianne Jean-Baptiste and film critic Corrina Antrobus
- Audio interview with Leigh, conducted by film critic Michel Ciment in 1996
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing




All thanks to the original uploader