October 10, 2013 -- This movie reminded me of a memorable line from a much better film, Broadcast News, in which one newsman says sarcastically to another, “Let's not forget, we're the story; not them.” The circle of family and friends in this movie is the story. It is about them, not us. They were so focused on themselves, they forgot to include the rest of us.

This semi-documentary film about filmmaker Sarah Polley's family secrets, starts out with hints about a big secret held by Sarah's late mother, Diane. It turns out this big secret isn't so big after all. It would have been a big deal 40 or 50 years ago, in a time when there weren't a dozen paternity tests on reality TV every week of the year. Now, it is kind of a pedestrian story. It is interesting, but not as exceptional as some people claim it is.

The story starts in the distant past, when extra-marital affairs were considered a scandal, front page news. Diane landed on the front page when she had an extra-marital affair and lost custody of her children in a scandalous divorce case. Diane later remarried and had several more children with her second husband, Michael Polley, who appears as himself in the film, reading his memoirs about his family aloud.

Both Michael and Diane were actors, who met and fell in love after Diane saw Michael act in a play. According to the film, Diane fell in love with the character Michael played as much as the man behind the character. Psychologically, they were polar opposites, Michael liked to be alone and Diane liked to party. Diane was very maternal and Michael left the child rearing duties to her.

When Diane was 42, she became pregnant with another child, Sarah. She decided to have an abortion, but decided against the abortion at the last minute. One of the more profound moments in the movie comes when Michael muses about that fateful decision, particularly in light of the fact that Sarah became his best friend in later years when the older children had grown and left home after Diane's death from cancer.

When Sarah grew up, she became aware of hints that her mother had a secret past that Michael and Sarah knew nothing about. Sarah began to look into Diane's past and talked to her old friends. She eventually found out Diane's big secret. This revelation had profound effects on the entire family. I won't get into the secret, but you can probably guess what it is. There are plenty of hints in the movie leading up to the big revelation.

The thing that surprised me most was the fact that what looked to be old family home movies of Diane, Michael, and the rest of the family, were sometimes fake. Actors played various family members in recreations of past events. These recreations were cleverly filmed to look like old home movies. It fooled me. I didn't know this was done until I saw the credits and discovered that the haunting beauty of Diane Polley was really that of actress Rebecca Jenkins, but Diane also appears in archival footage. Peter Evans plays Michael Polley at a younger age.

I found myself continually clicking on the “display” button on my remote (I watched the DVD at home) to see how much longer I had to go before it was over. I kept thinking the story was over, but the film refused to wrap up. There is one interesting revelation right at the very end of it, however. It turns out the film seems longer than it is at 108 minutes. Editing a documentary film is very tough to do because of the nature of the beast, but this one should have been shorter. This film rates a C+.

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