The Secret Life of Words

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")