Another fine French mystery
I always wonder about my ability to fully comprehend a foreign movie. Relying on translation, how many subtleties (and subtitles) are you missing in terms of language and tone of voice? And living outside the on-screen culture, how can you put the film in context to local events, or pick up on any historical allusions obvious to a native? Does that plate of goulash symbolize the 1956 invasion of Hungary by the Soviet Union? Do those long silences signify the presence of God, or do Swedes communicate almost exclusively by frowning?
On the other hand, the last three or four French films I’ve seen have all told the stories of mysterious and unresolved disappearances resulting in the tragic loss of a love. Rueful noir suspense-romances, you might categorize them. I don’t know if that’s because a preponderance of French movies making it overseas possess this theme, or because I unconsciously think a little murder might substitute for the lack of car crashes and superheroes my viscera has beome addicted to while taking in more local fare.
The good thing about a murder mystery/suspense film is that it usually makes use of recognizable tropes, even if it's in French. One might say a film of this type, which many would recognize as reaching its apotheosis in the hands of Alfred Hitchcock, transcends barriers of culture and language and comes with an intrinsic road-map of how to view it as it goes along.
In Ne le Dis à Personne (or Tell No One to those who snuck Mad Magazines between the pages of their high school French book), Alexandre and Margot Beck, a husband and wife, have a tiff at the same lake spot to which they return every year to commemorate their original childhood meeting. Angry, Margot impulsively swims across the night-time water to the other side. Out of view from her husband, and her audience, she screams. He goes after her, is hit in the face by an unseen attacker, and plunges into the lake. Black out.
Eight years later, black back in, followed by the slow elucidation of that night’s aftermath: She was killed by a serial killer; he was found alive on the dock, mysteriously pulled out of the water by no-one-knows who. But after Alexandre receives an anonymous email containing a video clip of someone who appears to be his dead wife - alive - the fun begins. With the help of a pair of street criminals from the same Paris suburbs that exploded in violence a few years ago (and here, you would indeed have to know that bit of recent French history to understand the political sub-text of this script choice) he eludes both the police - who never really believed his story and suspect him of a more recent killing, anyway - and a truly scary gang of murderous lackeys, including one henchwoman who's the personification of pure malice. (review continued)
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