Un Secret: 105 minutes. Rated: M. Director: Claude Miller. Starring: Cécile De France, Patrick Bruel, Ludivine Sagnier, Mathieu Amalric, Valentin Vigourt
This French period drama sounds compelling on paper. Part coming-of-age film and part tragic love story, stained by the smoke of the Second World War and the crippling angst of the Holocaust, it belongs to that class of films that locate the emotionally and ethically complex stories woven into the brutal tapestry of that era.
Unfortunately it suffers from an inefficiency of structure which means that as a piece of cinematic storytelling, it is worthy but unsatisfactory.
The first act is intriguing. Seven-year-old François (Vigourt) lives a haunted existence. Ghosts and guilt lurk in the corners of the house where he lives with his mother, Tania (De France) and Jewish father, Maxime (Bruel).
Smart but scrawny, François feels like the second prize in his disapproving gymnast father's life. Evidently this has something to do with the titular 'secret'. The early part of the film deals with François as he edges closer to the truth, in order to understand his parents' troubled past and forge his own sense of self and destiny.
A touch of magical realism that suggests François' childlike imagination, and the restrained charisma of young actors Vigourt and Quentin Dubuis (who portrays François at 14), mean this first act is quite striking.
Unfortunately the revelation of 'the secret' is less striking. It comes via an extended, meandering flashback, which comprises the bulk of the remaining portion of the film. This is lazy, tedious storytelling, particularly given that viewers will be able to guess the outcome very early, at least in general terms.
I won't retread the film's painstaking steps. Suffice it to say that Maxime has been married before, and that he became estranged from his first wife, Hannah (Sagnier) and adored son Simon (Orlando Nicoletti) during the War, after the Nazis began imprisoning France's Jews.
The estrangement came about due, in part, to Hannah's emotional decimation at the hands of her neglectful husband, who is infatuated with her brother's wife — the statuesque blonde athlete, Tania (destined, as we know, to become his wife and François' mother).
Hannah's tragic choices, if poorly made, are understandable in light of Maxime's neglect, and underscored by her desire to neither deny nor conceal her cultural roots.
This is in stark contrast to Maxime — dark featured and muscular,