It's this memory-as-identity obviation that gives Secret Life its intermittent unease, reaffirming that long-held illusions are indeed reality, and that erasing them recasts the self. And it's this existential gerrymandering that's most compelling.
His Secret Life(Le fate ignoranti)
✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Italy, France · 2001
Rated R · 1h 46m
Director Ferzan Özpetek
Starring Margherita Buy, Stefano Accorsi, Serra Yılmaz, Gabriel Garko
Genre Drama, Romance
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When Antonia's husband Massimo is killed in a car accident, she accidentally discovers that he has been having a same-sex affair with a produce wholesaler named Michele.
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What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
Philadelphia Inquirer by Carrie Rickey
Startlingly original comedy-drama.
The well-structured film goes beyond issues of sexuality, giving nuanced consideration to broader questions of love and loss, family and friendship, trust, lies and deception.
Washington Post by Desson Thomson
A movie that grows better by the minute.
His Secret Life's languid pace and general aimlessness keep getting in the way.
Solid and engrossing melodrama.
Even the graceful ending, one that lifts the film a notch, is startling. But at the very least, His Secret Life will leave you thinking.
It's a soapy, simplistic, but surprisingly affecting ambisexual melodrama that plays a little like Pedro Almodovar without the surreal frills.
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