Tuesday nights are not the best nights for movies, as in Paris, the new releases come out every Wednesday. Despite the low ratings from critics, I went to see the new movie from Isabel Coixet – “The secret life of words”.
This is my first movie of the Young Spanish Director, it would be difficult for me to make any comparison with her earlier works. Story is set on an oil rig in the middle of no where, Josef (played by Tom Robbins) suffers from severe burn injury from an accident and also temporarily lost his eye sight. Hanna (played by Sarah Polly) a former nurse was brought to take care of him. The bedside conversations revealed stories and past in both characters and in the end led to a strong emotional tie between the two. Hanna being a war refugee from ex-Yugoslavia now Croatia, lives an isolated and simple life in Copenhagen working on an assembly line of a plastic factory to forget her past. The encounter with Josef and the rest of the crew on the oil rig was accidental, yet it revealed much more about people who want to be left alone from the society to live a very particular life on an oil rig.
I quiet enjoyed the movie, as both Sarah Polly and Tom Robbins were excellent in their roles and the characters were very interesting. I am personally very intrigued by the this type of encounters. Overall, conversations rather witty and followed a rhythm of the ocean waves. The soundtrack is amazingly good, I am going to download it illegally soon. However, there are many things which bothered me:
- As Josef (Tim Robbins) walked out of the hospital after his recovery, he looked just a bit too healthy and sexy with a pair of too expensive jeans; must have been Armani or Dolce & Gabbana. Sorry for noticing these details, but it was just not credible.
- The scene of the Josef meeting Hanna’s consular was too forced and a bit awkward. The director was accused of making the same movie by the press (I imagine she already used this subject in a previous film), which did not bother me; yet an open talk about the pain and suffering from Armenians, Jews and ex-Yugoslavians was a bit too much.
- The relationship between Josef and Hanna is intimate in a psychological and emotional way, it goes beyond a simple love affaire. When Josef finally found Hanna, a French kiss is just strange to express their emotions, not to mention the huge difference in height (between Tim Robbins and Sarah Polly) which made this kiss even more difficult.
- Happy ending of the two getting married and having two kids were so un-necessary that I almost wanted to defend the director by saying “it probably is the idea of the producer or the marketing team”. Who knows.
These are my words, I probably focused a bit more on critiquing than appreciating. It is still worth seeing if you haven’t; if you have, what are some of your thoughts then?
