MovieChat Forums > Secrets & Lies (1997) Discussion > Anybody see Roxanne and Hortense having ...

Anybody see Roxanne and Hortense having a good sister relationship?

posted 11 years ago by jaystarstar
4 replies | jump to latest

I have fairly mixed feelings watching the end of the movie.

I could see them going out for maybe one night at the pub, Roxanne's friends being shocked at her black half-sister and rejecting her, and Roxanne losing interest as a result.

On the other hand I could see Hortense being a good influence as an elder sister, maybe picking up on Maurice's suggestion to Roxanne that she is smart enough to go to college, and getting her on track to get out of the lower-class life.

My guess is Maurice and Monica would come to grips with the fact they are never going to have children and take a bigger role as uncle/aunt to Roxanne ... and now, Hortense.

I figure Maurice (and Hortense) would work to get Cynthia to move out of the broken-down old row house and move into a nicer one-room apartment (or at least fix up the broken-down old row house).

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4) You ever seen Superman $#$# his pants? Case closed.

[–] lexyladyjax 11 years ago

Hortense and Roxanne were both wearing black at the end of the film. This meant (IMO) that they had bonded and were well on the way to becoming a family.

The lies and secrets that were keeping them all apart would bring them closer together in the future. It seems that they would all see each other more often from then on rather than being so distant.

Some things you just can't ride around...

[–] jaystarstar 11 years ago

Believe it or not, S&L actually points toward a *happy ending* for everybody, without any totally preposterous plot twists.

It would require Cynthia and Roxanne, who apparently hadn't been making many good life choices up until then, starting to make a few good ones, but it certainly wouldn't be impossible.

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4) You ever seen Superman $#$# his pants? Case closed.

[–] 11 years ago

[deleted]

[–] london777 7 years ago

Roxanne's friends being shocked at her black half-sister and rejecting her

Why should you assume that? This is London, England, we are talking about, not Baltimore.

If anything, it would have been intriguing and a topic of (possibly politically incorrect) humor among the group.

If any of Roxanne's friends did exhibit racist hostility I feel confident that she would quickly cross them off her Christmas list. Family would have come first, and none of the family did at any time indicate any racial prejudice.

In fact that is the great surprise of this film. From the summary we expect it to be a painful depiction of racism. In fact it is about the stigma of illegitimacy not of skin-color. The same story could have been told with only the most minor adjustments had Hortense been as white as snow.