THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES

This year’s academy award winner in the Best Foreign Film category is a marked improvement over last year’s, Departures, but that isn’t necessarily saying much given the stellar competitors in that category such as The White Ribbon and A Prophet. But I’ve already discussed their merits elsewhere. All of this is to say that although it is in no way the finest foreign film released in 2009, it is an entertaining blend of who-dun-it and Argentinian melodrama.

The story begins with Benjamin Espósito (Ricardo Darin) who, after retiring from his long career as a criminal court investigator in Buenos Aires, decides to write a novel based on an unresolved, 25 year old rape and murder case.  In a series of flashbacks we follow the course of that investigation as well as his involvement with his colleagues, Sandoval (Guillermo Francella) who works beside him, and the Judge’s assistant, Irene (Soledad Villamil), who later becomes a judge herself.  The title refers to the many secrets coursing throughout the story, from the feelings between Benjamin and Irene, to the actions of the prime suspect Gomez (Javier Godino), to the passionate grief of the victim’s husband, Ricardo Morales (Pablo Rago.)

Benjamin is the key to unlocking each and everyone of these characters’ secrets and is our Sherlock Holmes (or perhaps Watson) in this instance.  But the centrality of extended, extreme close-ups moves this procedural drama into operatic territory.  Given that the director,  Juan José Campanella comes from television, this is understandable and it, for the most part, works as a counterpoint.  Whereas most of these kinds of big screen crime dramas tend towards either action or tight-lipped neo nourish repression, Campanella is working within a more telenovellaish tradition.

Ultimately, however, no film of this genre succeeds without a well worked out puzzle narrative and a climactic surprise and in that sense the film is quite good.  You won’t necessarily know where the story is taking you, nor where it will end, on either the mystery or the love story level.  With wonderful performances from experienced actors, especially Darin, it’s a film that exceeded my not so high expectations, a sweet, sad and compelling meditation on memory.

The Secret In Their Eyes opens April 16, 2010.