Who knew the French could put together such a good thriller? Tell No One has one of those plots in which what you thought you knew falls away under your feet and nothing ends up as you originally thought it was. Viewers share this experience with Dr. Alexandre Beck, played with passion by Francois Cluzet, whose wife seems to have been murdered and he is eventually framed for it. He is the prototypical Hitchcock hero, caught in a trap of intrigue not of his own making. Through the many (perhaps too many) twists and turns of the plot, most of the action seems to be driven by character, and nearly every character in the film, even the minor ones, seem to be given a touch of life. It is here that the French thriller departs from the clockwork machinations of its American cousins like the Bourne films. French films are often obsessed with romantic love, usually in pretty sophisticated forms, and here Alexandre’s love for his wife drives everything. That love perhaps demands an ending that is too neat and sentimental for a sophisticated film. The scenes of Alexandre and his future bride as children are cloying and unnecessary. The wonderful Kristin Scott-Thomas is in this movie speaking French again (can’t get work in English films?), playing Beck’s closest friend, the lesbian partner of his sister. It has been noted elsewhere that the lesbian relationship here is portrayed as a perfectly normal (and complex) domestic arrangement. The director and writer Guilliame Canet plays the small part of a spoiled, rich young rapist whose murder turns out to be the hinge of the plot. Word is that an American version of the film is in the works; sounds like bad news. A well acted, suspenseful, and intellectually satisfying thriller.
