Secrets and Lies

Mike Leigh's latest installment in his on-going Human Comedy, British style. Cynthia -- a white, working class, painfully lonely mess of a middle-aged woman, caught in her own wildly dysfunctional family entanglements -- has her life further turned upside-down by the sudden arrival of Hortense, an educated, successful, young black woman, who claims to be the daughter Cynthia gave up for adoption some 20 years before. Hilarious and heart-wrenching at one and the same time, in the true Mike Leigh mode, "Secrets and Lies" is profoundly moving, and with his usual display of extraordinary performances from all. But Brenda Blethyn's dithering Cynthia is truly a rare creation.