Powerful

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

This is an interesting and thought-provoking drama in adequate length and yet with an air of naturalness and credibility . Including a dramatic and brooding screenplay by the same filmmaker . Hannah (Sarah Polley , Coixet wrote the role for her) is a factory worker who wears a hearing aid , she is forced to go on holiday , her first one in years . She doesn't want it and instead , Hannah arranges to find a job : caring for Josef (Tim Robbins who used contact lenses that damaged his eyes) , an injured oil rig worker who temporarily lost his sight . Hannah flies by helicopter to the oil rig (the name was Gaviota, but Coixet changed it into Genefke) . There she meets some workers , but is almost no one on the rig , except a cook (Javier Cámara) , an oceanographer and a few others . Good but downbeat and sad film in which stands out its moving finale . The film tells the touching story of two protagonists , conflicting trajectory of a hapless , introspective woman and a man whom she tends who is suffering from severe burns . She then slowly breaks her shell of silence and to be discovered a terrifying truth . This is a thought-provoking as well as pleasant flick filmed with great sensitivity and feeling . Interesting script by Isabel Coixet who wrote the role of Hannah with 'Sarah Polley' in mind , she knows very well inter-cross these two troublesome roles , a woman who have not been able to vanquish his dark past and suffering a fateful existence as well as a severely wounded rig worker . The picture is very engaging as well as provoking , though some infinite sadness follows the film at times . The flick moves in fits and starts most of which would be desirable , with some moments of enjoyment and others quite a few disconcerting . It's an intelligent and touching story although sometimes is slow moving and tiring but is finely developed with sense of style and sensibility . Enjoyable as well as intense drama filled with emotion , artistic scenes and plenty of sensitivity . The picture relies heavily on the unusual relationship among a unfortunate , frustrated nurse who has suffered a lot of past distresses and an understanding ill , but it doesn't makes boring , as it results to be entertaining . The film enjoys a breeze as well as moving final , and gives us much to think about it and in which doesn't deceive or dramatize unnecessarily . Along these lines , it is clear that writer/filmmaker Coixet tries to create an unforgettable picture . Apart from that , it has a touch Pedro Almodóvar , producer too , that always feels good . The picture is primarily supported by sensational players with good acting all around . All of them carry out their characters to perfection and show a look that says it all . As the excellent Sarah Polley as a hearing impaired who gives up her holiday and travels out to an oil rig , where she cares for a man and magnificent Tim Robbins as a burn victim on an accident . The support cast is frankly nice , such as : Reg Wilson , Steven Mackintosh , Eddie Marsan , Julie Christie , Danny Cunningham , Leonor Watling , many of them giving brief but agreeable interpretations . Special mention for Javier Cámara as a sympathetic cook . Emotive and stirring musical plenty of wonderful songs . Appropriate and evocative cinematography by Jean-Claude Larrieu . Most of the film locations are around an oil rig . Being shot on location as the oil rig used was the Borgholm Dolphin rig that was docked in Belfast at the time . Takes of the oil rig were shot in Belfast and Bilbao . Interior scenes were filmed in Navalcarnero (Madrid, Spain). The movie is dedicated the founder of IRCT -played by Julie Christie- . IRCT is an organization that promotes and supports the rehabilitation of torture victims and works for the prevention of torture worldwide . The motion picture was professional though slowly directed by Isabel Coixet . Here director Coixet mixes dull stretches with some really sensitive scenes . Coixet is an acclaimed Spanish filmmaker who has previously found international success with Elegy and The Secret Life of Words and she's the camera operator of her movies . Isabel never went to film school but she got a lot of education from commercials and really put in enough hours not to be in any way afraid of the camera . She founded her own production company , Miss Wasabi Films, in 2000 . And was member of the 'Official Competition' jury at the 59th Berlin International Film Festival in 2009 . Coixet has some fetish actresses who usually play his films , such as : Sarah Polley , Leonor Watling and Patricia Clarkson . Her filmography includes other feature films such as 'Cosas Que Nunca Dije' (Things I Never Told You) (1995), Elegy (2008), 'Mapa De Sonidos De Tokio' (Map of the Sounds of Tokyo) (2009), and the two latest 'Ayer No Termina Nunca' (Yesterday Never Ends) (2014) and 'Learning to Drive' (2013) and a thriller titled 'Another me' with Sophie Turner ; besides documentary films, shorts and commercials . And recent premiere in Berlin Festival of 'Nobody Wants the Night' (2015) starred by Juliette Binoche .

This is what Cassavedes thinks of as simple and direct theater, a pipeline to emotions.The idea is to simplify, presumably to purify. We have a remote oil rig with two full characters and a handful of surrounding beings. Our man (played by Tim Robbins) is temporarily blind, burned literally and figuratively: he was burned unsuccessfully trying to save a man he cuckolded from committing suicide. He is nursed by a character played by Sarah Polley, who has a tortured past.She knows how to work with the purpose of a film, and when that purpose it to turn things over to the actors, she really turns it on. This actually works as intended for the first two thirds, where the narrative doesn't exist and we just settle between these two. The situations and container are extreme, but we tie into the universal emotions that are raised here.Unfortunately, towards the end, narrative takes over and we leave the world of connected emotions and enter the world of a story that must find its end. He, now sighted tracks her down, and appeals to a future in love regardless of the certain pain. This may make for a happy, even acceptable ending, but it is not the experience we invested in.As if to assert that story trumps connectedness, the filmmaker goes the extraordinary distance to tell us how the story ends for every single character we met on that oilrig. Sometimes the filmmaker doesn't have a clue.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

In Ireland, the introspective deaf worker Hanna (Sarah Polley) is forced to take vacations by her boss after four years service in a factory. She travels, but when she overhears a phone conversation in a restaurant, she offers to nurse a burned worker with fractures and temporarily blind in a decommissioned oil rig. Joseph (Tim Robbins) seriously wounded after risking his life to rescue a colleague that committed suicide jumping in a fire and need to stay for a while in the platform to stabilize his health condition. Hanna is a lonely woman, with the paranoid behavior of eating white rice, chicken nuggets and apple everyday and never repeating the soap, and she slowly interacts with the few workers first, opening her heart to Joseph later and disclosing her traumatic experience in her old country."The Secret Life of Words" is a touching and heartbreaking romance, with an awesome screenplay and wonderful performances of Sarah Polley and Tim Robbins. The dramatic story develops perfectly the characters and in spite of the happy-end, it is never corny. The sensitive direction of Isabel Coixet, from the stunning "My Life Without Me" with the same Sarah Polley, is top-notch again. The process of re-socialization of Hanna, who was dead inside and reborn after meeting Joseph, is intense. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "A Vida Secreta das Palavras" ("The Secret Life of Words")

This has a beautiful set up, one which is highly in touch with the themes and the shape of the characters. That set up works because the performances allow it.The film is about being incomplete, abnormal people running away from normal situations - almost a reverse of the most common kind of drama this days, normal people in abnormal situations.There are great hints at understanding visually what the two main characters feel physically/deeply. So, the characters are an island, an artificial island, self-absorbed, and broken, like the oil platform. She is deaf, and able to decide whether she wants to hear, he is temporarily blind. I understood the deaf as someone who is able to decide when she wants to be the island (by total silence, or by the constant noise of the factory where she works when she's not being a nurse). The temporary blindness was the process by which Robbins' character is forced to "hear" (synonym to understand) instead of "seeing" (synonim to preconceive).The way the conclusion unfolded, with the revelation of the past of the girl struck me as natural, and confirmed me that the tensions, the revelations, etc. all come throughout the portions in the platform, it speaks to us and reveals more than the dialogs do, that's the interest of it. That's why it's visual. The set up tells the story. The opposition between inside outside helps. We have mostly hand held camera for the dialogs, and travelings for the outside.I knew Tim Robbins was competent. Sometimes he is great. He is an intelligent actor, one of those who is an artist himself, who has a great creative portion in the projects where he works, he has his own 'method'. Sarah Polley was a surprise. She is talented, she projects her characters internally, she's highly contained, but also highly emotional. I'm not sure about this, but in a way she reminds me the kind of actor Henry Fonda was (and his daughter as well). I'll follow her career. She directed a film recently, i'm interesting in finding out how she took her acting skills to the field of direction.Isabel Coixet has a personal touch, i suspect, it's not original, she doesn't pull out risky tricks, but she emulates well enough the references she takes. I like that. This is a worthwhile experience, one that may touch you deeply if you have the capacity to understand the abstractions of the minimalist interpretations and project those abstractions on the way the set is filmed. That's interesting...My opinion: 4/5 http://www.7eyes.wordpress.com