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Tell No One
There’s got to be a stupefyingly long-winded explanation for all of this!
2006
Review: August 12, 2008
Director: Guillaume Canet
Starring: François Cluzet, Marie-Josée Croze, André Dussollier, Kristin Scott Thomas
Can’t hurt, although you might end up attributing your confusion to that.
THE SETUP:
Man receives email that may be from his wife—but she died eight years ago!
DISCUSSION:
My friend and I are always up for a good French thriller, and this one sounded pretty awesome, although all reviews described it as good, but flawed. And that’s exactly what it was!
Alex and his wife Margot go for a midnight swim at their impossibly charming country house that all French people are apparently issued upon completion of college. They have a slight tiff, then she swims back—and he hears a stifled cry. He goes after her, but is clubbed in the face and falls into the water. He was in a coma for three days, and one of the enduring mysteries of the case is how he got back out of the water, which throws some suspicion on him. Then—eight years later!
So Alex is a pediatrician, and saved the life of a kid who is the son of a white [and French!] hip-hop gangster-type. Just tuck that away. He receives a mysterious email, but can’t open the attachment [I’d love it if this whole intricate plot spun out of control because some server was down or Alex’s hard drive was too full or something]. Then the police want to see him because two bodies were found on his lakeside property, which again makes Alex a suspect. There is then a long sequence of flashbacks as Alex drinks and remembers Margot and her cremation, set to Jeff Buckley’s virtually note-for-note recreation of Nina Simone’s version of “Lilac Wine.” Then Alex can finally open his attachment, which shows Margot, a little morose, but very much alive.
Then the police show up with some photos of Margot all bruised and battered, and interrogate Alex about beating her. He goes to see Margot’s sister, who delivers some info, and as soon as Alex leaves—is killed! And the murder weapon shows up in Alex’s house! By the same thugs that are also monitoring Alex’s secret emails!
Then follows a very exciting and excellently-shot escape from the police across the lanes of a busy highway, and then the favors Alex executed for his gangster friend come to be repaid in kind, as the movie takes an amusing side turn with Alex on the run. Then there are strained friendships, legal mumbo, more last-second rescues, and a brief glimpse of a woman Alex is sure was Margot.
All of this is at the hour point, and that is approximately where I gave up on trying to make any sense of this, or expend any effort to piece together the many clues. Which means there’s about an hour of uninvolved staring at the screen while the plot goes through numerous additional flips and twists and information is flung out like spitballs into your face. Then comes the explanation.
In the ultimate Scooby-Doo ending, a peripheral character suddenly emerges to drop several MINUTES of explanation for the whole thing, which involves several characters the movie has barely shown up until that point. And when the big explanation is finally over, and you breathe a big sigh of relief—there’s another of two minutes of the REAL explanation, that the other explanation didn’t cover. And after another few minutes, it’s over.
So it’s involving and well-made and takes the story in interesting and unexpected directions, in addition to handling its many peripheral characters with enough care to make them all interesting and distinct.
That said, there are some thrillers that keep you involved in the story by doling out information and keeping you guessing about what’s really going on. The problem with this one is, after an hour, you stop guessing. It’s just too much, it seems to be jerking you around, and looking back, this is the best decision, because there’s no way you could ever possibly really know what happened until the explanation. So it’s one thing to have a thriller that becomes alienating, but even more alienating at have this massive explanation involving people who have barely been seen up to this point dropped in your lap, which in one way tells viewers “If you WERE trying to pay attention up to this point, well, I guess YOU’RE the asshole, because that part was just spinning your wheels. And YOU fell for it!” Which can detract from one’s fond feeling for a movie.
But, you know, it’s French. Then again, so is Red Lights, which this movie makes an excellent contrast with. That one also features an explanation at the end, but the kind that throws light on everything that came before and arranges it all in order, which actually REWARDS you for staying involved. That film also limits the amount of peripheral characters and red herrings, and looking back now, I can think of a few characters in Tell No One that were well-drawn, but could and probably should have been eliminated entirely. Sure, it successfully creates this vast conspiracy, and I guess it successfully replicates that conspiracy feeling of “Oh whatever, it’s just too much for me to process,” feeling, with a side of “my but this is long, and I’m getting hungry,” and leaving you with a feeling of “Well, we certainly could have lost an hour of THAT.”
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
It won’t kill you, and is well-directed, but you’ll definitely live if you skip it.
