When the Oscar nominations were released early this year, the fight for the coveted Foreign Language Oscar looked a straight one between Michael Hanekes cool, austere White Ribbon and Jacques Audiards brilliant prison drama A Prophet, with possibly Israels Ajami an outsider. Then the Academy shocked everyone by picking Secrets In Their Eyes, an Argentinian film that seemed to come out of nowhere. To the Academys enormous credit, they got it right Secrets is a brilliant drama, and has something in spades the other films perhaps lack passion.
Its a revenge drama but a long way from Dirty Harry territory. It follows a federal justice agent, Benjamin (Darin), who has retired. He is keeping busy by writing his novel, but the book is actually his way of exorcising the demons of a 25-year-old old case, the brutal rape and murder of a young bride. He and his partner Pablo (the brilliant Guillermo Francella), now a sad drunk, believe the killer was a man called Gomez, but all they have to go on is a pile of Gomez letters. They dont even know if he is still alive.
Also thrown into the mix is the new head of the legal department, Irene Menéndez-Hastings, who worked on the case and whom Benjamin fell in love with. She never returned his feelings but he still carries a torch for her, and inserts a scene in his book where they have a romantic encounter at a train station.
Slowly Benjamin and Pablo close in on the killer, but when they see the effect the murder has had on the womans still-grieving husband, they begin to wonder whether they are doing the right thing. Pablo though is certain they will catch him, as the one thing that never changes is a mans passion that sentiment reverberates through the whole film like an echo.
Pablo realises that the names that keep cropping up in the suspects letters are footballers, and that he is a Racing Club fan. They go to matches, spot him among the crowd and chase him around the stadium, in the films one real tour de force of camerawork. Eventually it is Irene who breaks the suspect down and makes him confess to the crime. However, barely a year later Gomez is released to work as a hitman for the far-right Peronist party, so justice has failed and the characters are all defeated or are they?
We fast-forward back to the opening of the film, in which Benjamin presents his novel to Irene and the old emotions are stirred up again. How will she, now a mother of two and a successful judge, respond to this dredging up of the past? And how will they rest until justice is done?
Secrets weaves several themes into a gripping drama its a revenge tragedy, a legal argument and political tract, but at its heart it is simply about human passion. How can a man recover from losing his wife? How can a man love a woman for 25 years knowing she is married to someone else? The film takes its time to slowly reveal how each character manages to get through their lives carrying all of these burdens, but there are short bursts of violence or anger to keep the tension up.
The acting is utterly compelling throughout Argentinian cinema is not one of my expert areas, yet it is clear that they have some seriously heavyweight talent. Darin is simply brilliant as the tortured, desperate Darin, trying to scratch a 25-year-old itch and put his mind at ease, and Villamil is stunning as Irene, the object of his desire. The film is almost stolen though by Francella as Pablo, Darins seemingly hopeless drunk of a sidekick who can just about remember how to be a detective, and whose work gets them back on the track of the killer.
Overall verdict: Blisteringly passionate revenge drama with superb performances and a dark secret at its heart, which thoroughly deserved its Oscar. An absolute must-see.
Reviewer: Mike Martin