Tell No One—a review
Monday night we saw Tell No One, which is the English-subtitled release of the Belgian film Ne le dis à personne. I'm not a big fan of straight mysteries, so I have far less experience with them. And this movie is a straight murder mystery, so some of my comments may seem a little naive.



The movie starts off in somewhat disjointed fashion, which threw me out very quickly, but it slowly managed to reel me back in, to the point where I was caught up in the mystery, trying to figure out who did what to whom and who was doing what right now why. Early in the movie, the main character, Dr. Alex Beck, is walking in the trees with his wife when he suddenly flashes back to doing exactly the same thing when they were children, but the way the cinematographer handled the flashback made me think such things were going to be, if not common, at least key plot points in the film. Sadly, 'twas not to be. It was just a nice trick of camera work.

Anyway, the meat of the movie: the pediatrician and his wife are on vacation in the country, enjoying a bucolic day together. Night comes, she wanders off into the woods, there's a scream, and he's knocked unconscious. Cut to eight years later; she's been dead for eight years, and he's, if not exactly a walking shell, at least living a somewhat more circumscribed life. Then he gets word that the police have discovered new clues in her murder, re-opened the investigation, and he is once again a suspect. Just as he's digesting this new situation, he gets an anonymous hint that his wife may not be dead after all. And now the chases are on. Rather than cops and robbers, or good guys and bad guys, this film has three distinct teams all trying to figure out what's happening, while we come along for the ride, nearly as confused as Alex over not knowing who to trust, and in the end, just as caught up as he is in the rush to find the missing, perhaps-not-dead Margot before he's taken into custody for her murder, or outright killed himself by some other group.

The actual explanation of what happened and why was satisfying enough, but the way it was presented was, I felt, a little disappointing (it's all explained by the one character in a position to know everything, rather than discovered by Alex [and the viewer]).

I liked the depictions of different facets of French society, the personal relationships (though some are left a little vague), and the portrayal of a truly frantic man caught between things he knows are much bigger than himself, trying to find his way out or through. I also detected more than a little homage to Romeo and Juliet, along with some hints of Robert Ludlum's "Bourne." I disliked the pacing of the movie (it felt far longer than its two hours), the above-mentioned denouement, and the complete mystery about some characters (for instance, one of the supporting characters, who plays a big role, seems to be a fascinating caricature out of spy films, but who she is, what her background is, why she does what she does for the team she works for, all that is left a mystery [I know, it's a two-hour movie; there isn't time to put everything in]). Which leads me to the fact that the movie is based on a book I haven't read. It won four Césars (the French version of the Oscars) last year, and was nominated for five more. And the DVD will be out in October.

Something else I noticed: the film is in French with English subtitles. When there's no dialogue, of course, there are no subtitles. But when the characters are speaking, very little of it, it seems, shows up on the screen. I understand it would be difficult to keep up reading absolutely all the dialogue, but I wonder how much of the subtext, the art, we missed out on with the subtitles (and how much this happens in all subtitled films). French catches me a bit more, because I can speak a little, so I can hear some words that aren't translated. Anyway, the English subtitles are enough to let the English-speaking viewer know what's going on and not feel lost, but I'm just wondering, since I couldn't keep up with the rapid-fire delivery of the speech, what else there might have been.

And one other thing: I thought it was an interesting choice that almost all of the musical soundtrack was English-language songs; not translations, but songs I recognize. I wonder if the French-speaking viewer misses out on that aspect of the film as the English-speaker misses the dialogue nuances.