Little Secrets (2001)

Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Such a frustrating disappointment

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

I must admit that I am very partial to movies where an aspiring musician, singer or instrumentalist, is on a journey to achieve their dream. Here it is Evan Rachel Wood as Emily Lindstrom, 14, who loves the violin. In an opening scene we see her going to her new neighbors to 'borrow their TV', not literally, but to watch the live televised symphony convert. She practices the piece all week, then plays along with the telecast. And she is very good, especially for a girl of 14. This is a very nice and clean movie, without sex and bad language. Vivica A. Fox is Pauline, former symphony violinist who is a friend and also seems to be Emily's teacher. The title 'Little Secrets' has at least a couple of meanings. One is the neighborhood 'job' that Emily has. She sets up a booth as 'secret keeper' and various kids come to her with their secrets, often pieces of something valuable that is broken, and Emily places them in a brown bag, and locks it into her chest. The other meaning is her own secret. Her birth parents were killed by a drunk driver when she was only 10 months and she was adopted. No one other than her adoptive parents know that secret. It creates some ill feelings when 40-something mom becomes pregnant and is ga-ga over her coming newborn, making Emily wonder if she is a second-class daughter.Michael Angarano who was so good in 'Sky High' is Philip, the new 12-year-old neighbor who becomes good friends with Emily. His older brother David is played by David Gallagher, who takes a keep interest in Emily when he returns from tennis camp. SPOILERS. Emily gets an opportunity to audition for a youth symphony, but has an untimely accident. She trips and falls off the roof, where she often practices outside her second floor bedroom. She has to be hospitalized and her violin is broken. But Philip had made a video of her playing a classical piece, he and brother David brought the tape to the auditions, and later Emily received a letter of acceptance. And, her dad gave her a new violin.

It may be the first time we are seeing a film without any fights and sex. Really it is film about love and full of love. We envy that world. Actually it is world of our dreams, a world of love. We congratulate the story maker and directer for this wonderful film.We think the script, direction and acting was really good.We think that this kind of love films are a necessary divertion in this world of religious hatred and violence.We never expected such a film from Hollywood. We usually see such good films on French TV. Here our Bollywood is an evil place producing 100s of filthy movies every month. We love to see such films.

David Lynch's "Blue Velvet" starts with some great images: ideal suburbia - kids crossing the street, firemen waving as they go down the road on their truck, and a man watering his garden. Then the guy has a stroke and collapses. We are then treated to the best shot of the film: his dog playfully jumping around the squirting hose he continues to hold as a toddler ambles toward him. Then the camera moves down for a macro shot of the insect world in his lawn, introducing the film's theme that there is a secret and much nastier world just below the surface of "Norman Rockwell" suburbia.In "Little Secrets", Emily runs a business which keeps all the neighborhood secrets in a safe place for a fee. It takes Lynch's dark theme and turns it into a lesson about friendship and trust. Apparently this thematic content is the reason the film was given a PG rating, although it is hard to imagine that anyone would think this film required "parental guidance".The film features a decent performance from Evan Rachel Wood (Emily), although there is nothing here that would lead anyone to think she was capable of her breakout performance in "Thirteen". Michael Angarano (Phillip) is fantastic opposite Wood and they have a nice chemistry. David Gallagher does a good job in a small role that is unnecessarily tacked onto the story, presumably to capitalize on his "7th Heaven" popularly. Blair Treu, the film's director, should have recognized in mid-production that a better resolution would have been the pairing of Emily and Phillip rather than Emily and David. It was an easy fix, minor rewrites and re-shooting a couple scenes to make Phillip the same age as Emily, they certainly look the same age. Gallagher's drawing power did not save the production commercially (it tanked big time at the box office) so they ruined the ending for nothing.The director of photography used a lot of great crane shots and creative camera angles but overall the the shots should have been tighter (i.e. closer shots of the faces and eyes). One exception was Caitlin E. J. Meyer (Isabelle) who the camera loves and who steals her scenes as the nine-year old younger sister of Emily's best friend. Isabelle has the movie's best line "Life is complicated when you look like Claudia Schiffer".This is a very original premise, a well-conceived and rather profound story. It has one especially great scene when the web of secrets starts to crumble. First Emily is angry at David because he was caught drinking which was his secret, making David angry at Phillip for telling Emily his secret, which makes Phillip angry at Emily for telling David that he had told her David's secret.

Refreshingly different from the usual young teen fare. A 14-year-old girl has goals and focus on a classical music career and, while living a fairly normal teen life.There are many little secrets to be revealed throughout the course of the film. An interesting gimmick that adds to the charm and interest.**SPOILER ALERT** The ending is a bit of a disconnect. The real hero, 12-year-old Phillip, should have gotten the girl at the end. The director dismisses this outcome in the DVD commentary as "implausible." Why? A 12-year-old seventh grader being attracted to a 14-year-old 8th or 9th grader? What's so implausible about that? We see little of the (15-year-old) older brother character to motivate any sense of connection,The film manages to overcome the 'Afterschool Special' formula with some good photography and a good dramatic score. We are mostly spared monotonous rap music or the teen pop score that would be the norm in this kind of film. The morality lessons are nicely underplayed. The film could have been improved by focusing more on the love triangle and not getting so distracted with most of sub-plots.