Aristides-2 Review of A Secret

A Secret (2007)

Deeply Disturbed Mother Commits Serious Indiscretion and Dooms Self & Young Son To Death

[3/10 · 2 April 2011]

Though the story told is autobiographical, and tragic, you don't have to care much at all for a couple of the main characters. I found two reasons to loath this movie: 1. The first wife, Tania, so deeply disturbed when she learns of her husband Maxime's attraction to her sister-in-law Hannah, violates her deepest maternal instincts, i.e. to protect her young son Simon, by masochistically revealing herself to be a Jew to the Vichy police (they subsequently perish in an extermination camp).....and only a mile away from safety! Grotesque human behavior by all three of these adults makes them impossible to relate to. 2. Casting anomalies: Jumping back and forth over decades the actors cast look the same age most, if not all of the time. Which confuses the viewer repeatedly about chronology. ( I suppose in the case of the too-old-to- begin-with Patrick Bruel (Maxime), the director just accepted this reality while looking at dailies by rationalizing, "If the audience is going to get hung up over his looking too old then they're not really into the story!" Oh yeah director Miller: Bruel was too old looking in 1937 and looking exactly the same....too old.....twenty years later!) Overall conclusion: This movie reduced the horror of the French-Jewish experience of the Holocaust to a sordid love triangle. Yuch!