Secrets of the Heart

A warmly-lensed coming-of-ager, Secrets of the Heart features a breakout performance by the enormously photogenic child actor Andoni Erburu as Javi, a 9-year-old boy trying to come to grips with both the suicide of his father and the burgeoning relationship between his mother (Silvia Munt, in a beautifully restrained performance) and his uncle. Complicating his efforts to get his bearings are the erosion of the boy's part-time support system, the two aunts he and his older brother board with during the school year, both of whom turn out to be leading lives of quiet desperation. While director Montxo Armendáriz's camera is a bit too smitten with Erburu's face, and the film is par for the genre in that nothing much ever happens, this poignant and occasionally very funny drama is nevertheless finely framed and flawlessly acted. Recommended. (S. C. Sickles)