Tell No One

Ne le dis à personne; thriller, France, 2006; D: Guilaumme Canet, S: François Cluzet, André Dussollier, Kristin Scott Thomas, François Berléand, Marie-Josée Croze, Nathalie Baye, Jean Rochefort, Guillaume Canet

Alex and his wife Margot are swimming on a lake, she disappears on the other side, he goes to search for her, but is hit with a bat and falls unconscious. 8 years later, Margot has been declared dead and Alex tries to continue his life as a pediatrician. He receives an e-mail which shows a video of Margot still alive at a train station. The police shows up and informs him they found two male corpses at the lake with a bat that has traces of Alex's blood; and that they discovered a key among them with a compartment with photos of Margot in bruises 8 years ago. When Charlotte is murdered, and the police finds the murder gun at Alex's apartment, Alex is the suspect and he flees. He finds out that Margot shot Philippe, a pedophile, so Margot's dad Jacques, a retired police officer, hid his corpse. But Philippe's dad, the millionaire Neuville, ordered two thugs to kill Margot at the lake, so Jacques bribed one of them to kill the other one, and then killed the former, and feigned Margot's death so keep her safe from Neuville, who bribed and controlled half of police department. Neuville is arrested, while Jacques and Margot reunite.

Excellent crime thriller "Tell No One" is a typical Agatha Christie-style murder mystery done in a tour-de-force way, slowly switching gears from a steady to a furious peace, but all done in an intelligent manner thanks to a calm, restrained, but incredibly focused direction by Guilaumme Canet. A rare French film adaptation of an American novel, in this case the eponymous novel by Harlan Coben, "Tell No One" may be conventional, and it may be relaying too much on the final twist ending, but all the subplots leading to it manage to engage, and every little questionable detail plays a role later on—nothing is wasted, everything has its why and because when it connects in the end. For instance, a random small time gangster Bruno appears in the opening act, shouting in the hospital until the protagonist Alex (brilliant Francois Cluzet) takes his injured son for treatment. Later, when Alex is chased by the police, he finds refuge by Bruno and his friend in a ghetto: as soon as the police arrive there, the local migrant poor populace is agitated as it assumes the police is coming for them, so they throw a trash can at the police car, which totally disrupts their pursuit. The 5-minute chase sequence is outstanding, almost without any dialogue, with the highlight of Alex crossing a highway as a truck hits the breaks and several cars slam into it. All the actors are outstanding, but Nathalie Baye stands out even a bit more as Alex's lawyer Elisabeth, especially in the scene where she "grills" the District Attorney when she tells him she has a tight alibi for Alex during Charlotte's murder, so the DA goes: "There's just one catch. The murder weapon was found at his place." - "Trouble is, the tables have turned. That's now your problem! Tell the press your men planted evidence without your knowledge. At worst, you're a coward. At best, a DA without authority." The story tackles all the usual motives of crime genre: framing an innocent man as a cover-up to protect a criminal at the top; corruption; suppressed truth; uncovering of a polluted system; honesty vs. dishonesty. The twist ending must not be revealed, but it is insane, an incredible example of a genius pay-off that brings down the house, and even features a twist ending after the twist ending, a dizzying, unbelievable experience.

Grade:+++