WHAT PEOPLE KNOW, AND WISH THEY DIDN'T, THE HEART OF `SECRETS'.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Critic

Once again, Mike Leigh has spun a clump of unhappy English lives into mesmerizing, compelling cinema. But the difference between ``Secrets & Lies'' and the likes of Leigh's acrid ``Naked,'' depressive ``High Hopes'' and even the half-cheery, half-grotesque ``Life Is Sweet'' is that the new movie has a generous, optimistic heart that grows stronger and more credible with each watering of tears.

Winner of this year's Cannes Film Festival's Best Picture award, ``Secrets'' could be construed as an attempt on Leigh's part to reach a wider audience. Denizens of his previous films have been aggressively weird or nasty, and Leigh himself often has taken a sarcastic stance toward classes and attitudes he clearly deemed unworthy. That, added to the general plotlessness of his efforts, has translated into critical admiration and sparse attendance.

But while ``Secrets'' might have benefited from a little more of Leigh's usual cutting humor - it comes awfully close, at times, to the brink of overwrought soap opera - the damaged souls on display here are presented with a seriousness and compassion deeper than anything Leigh has previously reached. He hasn't really smoothed his edgier instincts; rather, he's dug up a stronger, sincerer appreciation of humanity with them.

Though Leigh sets up what appears to be a story about race, what he's really after is a microscopic examination of the joys and trials of family. It begins with a black woman's funeral in London; her adopted daughter, Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), is left both free and emotionally compelled to seek out her birth mother.

She's as surprised as anybody to discover the woman is white and a nervous wreck. Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn, who copped Cannes' Best Actress prize) is a jittery, constantly crying drunk with one resentful adult daughter (Claire Rushbrook's Roxanne) and only a vague recollection of either girl's fathers. A teen-age mother, she gave up Hortense sight unseen at birth; only she and her sensitive brother Maurice (Timothy Spall, the memorably geeky ``gourmet chef'' from ``Life Is Sweet'') know there even was a second child.

Hortense gradually courts the reluctant, unbelieving Cynthia, and a small but great miracle happens: the older woman's stark, empty life blossoms. The fact that Hortense is far better educated, warmer amd more stable than anyone (save Maurice) in Cynthia's immediate family makes her heartfelt attentions all the more encouraging.

As for Maurice, a successful photographer with a comfortable but mysteriously troubled marriage to a suburban materialist (Phyllis Logan), he is a marvel of well-meaning patience. Though packed with unblinking, emotionally raw scenes (Leigh just sets the camera on stressed-out people and lets them play out their anguish uncut and unfiltered), perhaps the most riveting sequence in ``Secrets & Lies'' doesn't involve a family issue at all, but Maurice's thoughtful handling of an angry ex-business partner, come back after many years from a ruinous stay in Australia.

Lovely as that scene is, it's trumped by the power of the film's extended climax: Roxanne's birthday party at Maurice's house, where Cynthia is bound to blurt out the truth about her new ``friend'' Hortense. Other secrets - some a tad trite - are revealed as well, and the emotional fireworks are spectacular. But they're also quite surprising, as some issues we expected to explode are virtually smothered by more personal, specific betrayals and forgivings.

Significantly, the movie's most rational characters, Hortense and Maurice, apply vision for a living (she's an optometrist). ``Secrets & Lies'' is a movie about the dignified calling of trying to see what people need, and the painful but rewarding effort of showing it to them.

THE FACTS

The film: ``Secrets & Lies'' (R; language, substance abuse).

The stars: Brenda Blethyn, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Timothy Spall, Phyllis Logan, Claire Rushbrook.

Behind the scenes: Written and directed by Mike Leigh. Produced by Simon Channing-Williams. Released by October Films.

Running time: Two hours, 22 minutes.

Playing: Selected theaters including Town Center 5 in Encino and the Esquire in Pasadena

Our rating: Four Stars.