Little Secrets is an independent film starring Evan Rachel Wood, Michael Angarano and David Gallagher. It premiered in the Heartland Film Festival in October 2001, and made its limited theatrical release on 23 August 2002.
Synopsis
An aspiring 14-year-old concert violinist named Emily Lindstrom (played by Wood) spends her summer practicing for an audition to get into the InterMountain Youth Symphony Orchestra (Salt Lake City, Utah) while her friends go off to camp. She also runs a secret-keeping business, in which other children give her fifty cents to tell her a secret, which she promises to keep; this is a talent that she is normally very good at. Meanwhile, her parents are expecting another child and seem to care more about it than Emily.
New neighbors move in next door, including Philip (played by Angarano). During the move, he accidentally breaks a valued chess piece and is caught by Emily as he attempts to bury it in the front garden. Philip pays Emily fifty cents to keep his deed a secret, and to hide the piece in her treasure trunk (along with other broken property from her other clients, in paper bags labeled with their names).
When Philip decides to join Emily in an afternoon tea session using her family's expensive china, they accidentally break one of the teacups. Emily is faced with the challenge of keeping her own secret and having someone else know about it. Meanwhile, as Philip begins falling for Emily, his brother David enters the picture. David had previously been at to tennis camp, but was sent back home because he was allegedly drunk and was involved in a car accident. Phillip tells her this family secret in exchange that Emily tells him a secret about her greetings with her friends. Emily starts getting upset, and says that a person who drink drives will do it again before storming off. Emily then starts to lose her secret-keeping talent as she falls for David. David also begins falling for Emily, which makes Philip jealous.
During the baby shower, David tries to talk to Emily, where she reveals that she knows how he was expelled from tennis camp. After, Emily goes to get her violin from the roof and tumbles from the rooftop and breaks her neck, necessitating a trip to the hospital. While Emily is at the hospital, her mother gives birth to her sister Grace. Everyone is by Emily's hospital bed except David, who is eavesdropping behind the curtain. Emily's friends ask if her sister looks like she did when she was a baby, and Emily reveals that she is adopted. Her birth parents were killed while they were driving in a car while she was 10 months old after being struck by a drunk driver, and considers it a miracle that she lived. The driver spent one year in prison and after being released barely a month, crashed into someone else's car and killed himself. Upon hearing this, David feels very guilty and understands why she despises him so much. After Emily is released from the hospital, she and Philip return all of the paper bags to her clients. To thank Philip, Emily kisses him on the cheek. Then David appears, and Emily kisses David on the lips.
The film made its TV premiere on the channel now known as Encore Wam on September 5, 2003. After the film premiered, Evan Rachel Wood, the star of the film, who also played Jessie Sammler on ABC's Once and Again, told the story behind the movie in a 3-minute interview for WAM! entitled Evan Rachel Wood on Little Secrets. That interview has Evan saying in the beginning, "I'm Evan Rachel Wood and I'm 15 and I play Emily in Little Secrets."
Free-TV airings for Little Secrets
Little Secrets was originally scheduled to play on April 4, 2005 on the Disney Channel, but it actually made its free-TV premiere on the Hallmark Channel on April 15, 2006. It also aired on Hallmark Movie Channel. On July 11, 2008, it was announced that the Disney Channel will start to air the film as well. Since Disney Channel is the only Disney-owned network in the U.S. that has never aired Evan Rachel Wood content since she was born September 7, 1987 in Raleigh, North Carolina, the station may have the chance to air Little Secrets by the end of 2009 or as early as 2010. On November 20, 2009, it is said that The Walt Disney Company has approved the premiere of Little Secrets on the U.S. Disney Channel.
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