Friday
29Aug2008
Movie Review - 'Tell No One'
Friday, August 29, 2008 at 12:02AM Tell No OneStarring François Cluzet, Marie-Josée Croze, and Kristin Scott Thomas
Directed by Guillaume Canet
Rated R
Eight years earlier, Dr. Alexandre
Beck (François
Cluzet) was a suspect in the murder of his wife (Marie-Josée
Croze from Munich and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly).
Her death was gruesome, though the doctor was eventually cleared when a serial
killer whose modus operandi closely resembled that in the Beck case was arrested
on other charges.
In the eight years since her death,
Alex has not put the past behind him, which would be impossible for anyone to
ask of him. He has found stability in his work and seems to be adjusting better
everyday. But then he gets a strange e-mail that appears to be recent security
camera footage of his late wife at a train station and his mind, understandably,
goes to a different place.Is his wife alive? Or is this some other cruel trick?
Complicating matters is the discovery
of two bodies near the site of where his wife was buried, and evidence at the
scene suggests that Beck might somehow be involved, reopening the case of his
own dead wife, who may not be dead, after all.
Tell No One is more convoluted than it
requires, throwing an arsenal at twists at the audience that we have some
difficultly cutting through. The film isn’t impenetrable, but given what’s good
here, Tell No One doesn’t do itself any favors by trying to stay two
steps ahead all the time.
Almost without exception, movies that
attempt to outsmart their audience are too self-aware; rather than sticking with
the story they started to tell us, they veer off into Unpredictaville, not
recognizing that we were really enjoying the ride on the main road before.
The Sixth Sense succeeds because the plan all along was setting up the
swerve. Tell No One is about one particular thing, and then to keep you
in the dark for an extra ten minutes, it completely subverts itself so you can’t
guess the ending. It’s a trick, and as Gob Bluth so astutely reminds us on
Arrested Development, a trick is something a whore does for money.
But all is not lost: Tell No One
has some pretty intense action about midway through, and I really liked some of
the supporting characters, including
Kristin Scott Thomas as Beck’s longtime
confidant and the haggard
François Berléand as the detective who has
reopened the investigation against Beck. Cluzet is a very good anchor, playing
the archetypal Hitchockian wrong(ed) man with a lot of depth and fear. He
doesn't have Cary Grant's charm at his disposal to bribe his way out of things
and just has to wait out his own fate. His fear is palpable, making him a lot
easier to relate to.
I’m sure actor-turned-director
Guillame Canet was going for a high minded
thriller with twist after twist, and that’s what we got. But sometimes even
Chubby Checker does another dance.
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