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Directed by Guillaume Canet
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Tell No
One “Tell No One,”
a French mystery film originally released in 2006 and just now available on
DVD, is a brilliant and baffling film – sometimes a bit too brilliant
for its own good. Nevertheless it
is an amazing achievement. Two
people have been in love since childhood and are now married --- the kind of
fairy tale that needs to come true in the movies – they are Alex and
Margot Beck – and they are played by François Cluzet and Marie-Jozée Croze, the French-Canadian actress whom you’ll
recall as the heroin addict in “The Barbarian Invasions” and the
therapist in “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.” One night as they go swimming naked in
their own private lake – a place they’ve regarded as their own --
Margot swims across, then Alex hears what could be a scream. He swims to the other bank but is hit
with something and falls back into the lake, unconscious. Her body is cremated. Cut to eight years later, when Alex is
now a doctor and Margot has perhaps reappeared; is she sending him messages
on his computer? But then the police find
her body and that of another man, buried these eight years. And the evidence points to Alex as the
murderer. What happens from that
point on is the plot of the rest of “Tell No One.” If it sounds familiar, that’s because
it is based on a novel by the American mystery writer Harlen
Coben.
But the writer/director Guillaume Canet has
made us sit up on the edge of our seats for the next two hours, as he
carefully puts a variety of brilliant red herrings before us. And his lead, François Cluzet, who’s been in almost a hundred films, is
known to Americans mainly for small roles in Altman’s “Pret-a-Porter,” “Round Midnight,” and
“Chocolat.” He has exactly the right anonymous
face and voice for the role; a quiet man, thoroughly professional-- so is he
hiding something? Is he as
innocent as he appears to be? I’m a sucker for a well-crafted
mystery, and “Tell No One” is exactly that, with layers of clues
that need to be unraveled before we know who and how and why. In fact, the final reveal is a bit
over the top, but by then you won’t care; you’ll have had too
much fun watching what happens on screen. There are some marvelous characters
around the periphery of the film too, including a taxi driver whose
hemophiliac son Alex once saved.
It’s a film of odd moments and strange juxtapositions. Be careful you don’t miss a
thing. As I say, it’s now
available on DVD and well worth it. |