The Secret Life of Words

A film set on an oil platform in the North Sea. Hanna works in a factory. She speaks to nobody, eats the same thing every day, switches off her hearing aid to cut out sound, and has not taken leave in years. Her employer forces her into a holiday. She does not know what to do with it. She overhears a conversation in a restaurant. There has been a fire on a platform, a man has been burned, and no nurse can be found to attend him there. She goes. The platform is nearly empty. Production stopped after the accident and only a few people remain. Josef lies with his eyes bandaged. He cannot see for the moment, talks a great deal, and asks Hanna questions. From there the film takes place in a room with two people. Dressings, food, soap and talk. Josef tells. What happened in the fire, his marriage, his guilt. Hanna does not. Even her name is not real. What the narrative is interested in is not care but silence: the whole tension of the film lies in why a woman does not speak and what she will say at the end. Her past opens in the last section. What is described is what was done to women in the Balkan war, and the film gives it in a single scene, without ornament. The platform is a choice. There is no land around, nowhere to run, and the only way out is a helicopter. The film was named Best Film at Spain's national cinema awards. Sarah Polley, Tim Robbins, Javier Cámara and Julie Christie are in the cast. Isabel Coixet wrote and directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes slow two-character drama on heavy subjects. Who it is not for: anyone who cannot take the account in the last section; the content is direct testimony of torture and rape.