Le cose che non ti ho mai detto

I'm so sorry that this movie has existed for over 10 years before I saw it, because it is completely adorable and delightful. Andrew McCarthy is perfectly cast as a sad sack 30-something, and the incomparable Lili Taylor is also perfect as the object of his affection. The film is a terrific balance of poignant moments and sly humor (the scene with the woman sobbing in the grocery store is a prime example). The sharp, off-beat writing just reminds me how bland and generic and dull Hollywood movies are, even the supposedly cutting edge ones like Funny People. The secondary characters also add to the atmosphere - Debi Mazer, Alexis Arquette, Seymour Cassel and others. I would highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys movies about people and the eternal quest for happiness.

Anything may happen. Anything. You may love somebody so much that just the fear of losing him/her makes you spoil it all, and end up losing him/her. You may wake up besides someone you hadn't even imagined you could know, and look at yourself now! It is as if somebody gave you one of those puzzles with pieces of a picture of Madrid, the photograph of some ponies, or the Niagara Falls. And the pieces are supposed to match, but they don't...

Ann and Don are two people living in a little lost village in North America that are going through a major crisis in their lives. Don Henderson (Andrew McCarthy) has seemingly finished recently a traumatic relationship due to his own errors. He is temporarily working for his father selling houses, while he tries to help depressed people at night working in the Hope Line just to avoid facing his problems (can someone who doesn't withstand himself help other people?). Ann (Lily Taylor) works in a photography store, and does not have a very clear view of what she intends to do with her life. Her boyfriend Bob phones her from Prague to tell her that their relationship is over, presumably because he has met another girl. It is in that moment when Ann notices that she didn't really loved Bob before, but she has started loving him now, when he phoned to end up their relationship. In that moment she starts wondering about things she should have told him and never did, and how stupid she was in not telling him the most important things and occulting minor unimportant things.

"Things I never told you" is the story of Ann and Don, but also of the rest of depressive, solitary and lost characters that come and go through the film. It is a melancholic and sorrowful movie about people who can't find love, or found and lost it (the excellent music and photography do help a lot to remark these features) dedicated to all the sensitive and solitary souls around the world. However, in spite of dealing with depressive people, it is not a depressive film. It is a film that makes you wonder whether you are doing the right thing with your life, whether you are sharing it with the right people, or you will find someone appropriate sometime. It is a film that makes you feel that you should be more honest with the people you appreciate, and that you should live the good moments intensely, because nobody knows how long they are going to last. So, don't wait until tomorrow to say or do those important things you are always delaying, because it may be too late, and things not said or done are usually the most important.

Ten years after I'm still surprised to see that this film remains mostly unknown, even to some Coixet's fans who have appreciated her latest films. I don't know either why people talk about depression as something related to this film as for me it is the most positive and optimistic that Isabel has made until today. It's true that we accompany some people settled in the border of society passing through their depressions, people who by some reason have problems to match to the world, but every second of this film shows hope and confidence in human condition. All these lives entwined like a web, struggle to find their place and build their own solution to this world, necessarily completed by a twin soul. It joins the message of Chaplin's "Modern Times", the world isn't perfect but we have to live in and human nature is strong enough to go on. It's a tale about love and life, about self definition and identity, about depression and hope, about knowing ourselves. To help Isabel in her aim we find two of the best actors in independent cinema of that moment. Andrew and Lily are simply perfect, they make theirs the brilliant script that, like in the work of Russian master Chejov, only showing us those banal conversations between people, it allows to discover by intuition the real message that underlies the surface: those "Things I never Told You" that contain the real passion of the world.

As some directors wear their influences on their sleeve, so does Isabel Coixet but with enough style and originality that you enjoy noticing. Though we've seen stories such as this many times, we rarely get away without feeling ultimately manipulated to the gills. Things I Never Told You actually takes the uncommon stance that the audience can decide what to feel based on their own experiences and their own aesthetics. No John Williams scores swelling over touching imagery and no lingering shots of teary unions with lovers, children, pets, or parents.

The range of bizarre characters and the nearly flawless performances by the finest of indie film actors (and Andrew McCarthy of all people) place this film in a class of rarely distributed features that rent like crazy. I highly recommend this movie to anyone.

Gifted film-maker Isabel Coixet has crafted a rewardingly dark comedy of profound emotional resonance. The earthy performances feel vividly lifelike, wholly uncontrived. A compassionate, visually sublime film of rare insight and enormous sensitivity. While dealing bluntly with the multifaceted, deleterious effects of depression, Coixet's sardonic text has an edifying warmth and humanity not oft seen. And the rumours were true, Andrew McCarthy does have the most delectable behind! As though having been deliciously cloistered in some magnificently lucid dream, I genuinely didn't want 'Things I Never Told You' to end, this charming, elegiac indie masterpiece is eminently worthy of rediscovery. While frequently exploring the murkier interstices of the human soul, this engagingly intelligent drama is never trite or maudlin, but, mirroring its spellbinding star, Lili Taylor, it maintains an uncommonly forceful fascination!