Sarah Polley gives a wonderfully searching performance as a woman in a state of extreme isolation in The Secret Life of Words, a compellingly claustrophobic drama set mostly aboard an oil rig. The latest film by Isabel Coixet tackles its big theme - silence as a defence against tragedy - with delicacy, sympathy and originality. Hanna is a timid and insecure factory worker who's been working four years without a break. While she's on a forced holiday, she overhears a conversation about an accident on an oil rig; she volunteers to nurse the survivor, Josef (Tim Robbins), back to health. Witty, intelligent, and self-deprecating, Josef has been temporarily blinded; while Hanna barely talks, he does nothing but. Their relationship plays out against the backdrop of life on the rig: 25 million waves, a Spanish cook (Javier Cámara) and a goose, and reveals, above all else, the power of love even in the most terrible circumstances.