The Secret in Their Eyes
Cinema Nova, 10/08/2010
Status: Behind by 12 films
Although there are some fairly major plot-holes along the road, The Secret in Their Eyes is a fairly interesting journey. It won the foreign language Oscar this year, and I can see why - although Argentinean, it’s a fairly conventionally Hollywood-style story. It’s a grotesque crime story wrapped around by a love story.
Benjamin is a retired judges’ clerk decides to write a novel of the case that he couldn’t shake. As he progresses with his manuscript he reflects on the Morales case, a brutal murder 25 years prior, and also on the love of his life, Irene, the one who got away.
RICARDO DARIN (Nine Queens) and SOLEDAD VILLAMIL (from nothing I’ve seen before, I’m not really across Spanish language TV) are very good as the would-be lovers. They play the characters both at 30 and at 55 although it’s a shame the film’s budget didn’t stretch to a decent grey wig for Darin. But films are about nothing if not suspending disbelief, what?
And lucky they are, what with the occasional massive hole in the plot to be contended with. But the actors and the film neatly skip over them, rather than falling in, and so the pace keeps tripping along. They sell the love story better than the crime story, and the ending is feels too neatly tied up for me (which is where the Hollywood comparisons sneak in) but writer-director Juan Jose Campanella’s adaptation of a the Argentinean best-seller is still worth a look-see.
