Sometimes Oscar gets it exactly right.
It is stunning how a multilayered movie like Juan José Campanella’s The Secret In Their Eyes — this year’s winner for best foreign language film — can keep its eye fixed on multiple elements and themes, while retaining the passion that drives the plot.
It’s a violent crime story, a love story (destroyed by tragedy), another love story (unrequited) and a story about corruption in Argentina. It encompasses revenge, love, passion, guilt and redemption, with moving performances from every corner of the screen and a shock ending worthy of Stephen King.
As The Secret In Their Eyes opens, a retired cop named Benjamin Esposito (Ricardo Darín) tries to write the opening lines of a book. But his creative flow is shattered when the rape-murder that is the book’s theme plays out in his head (and onscreen).
His next stop: the office of a young-ish judge named Irene Hastings (Soledad Villamil), his former supervisor as it turns out, and a woman with whom he’d shared deep romantic feelings that were thwarted by their class differences (she was educated at Cornell, he’s a lifetime street cop). Turns out he wants to borrow an old typewriter, and the cold-case files on a 1974 rape-murder of a 23-year-old newlywed — a case that has eaten at his soul and destroyed his career.
Flash back to ’74 and Esposito and his jovial, alcoholic partner Sandoval (Guillermo Francella) and his chief rival Romano (Mariano Argento) are being introduced to their new boss by Judge Lacalle (Mario Alarcon), a bureaucratic magistrate with a clear dislike for Esposito. Cue the rape case, and some innovative thinking by Esposito as he sits with the grieving widower Morales (Pablo Rago) and looks at old pictures, studying the eyes of her acquaintances.
The eyes pay off. Esposito tags an old hometown friend named Gom
ez (Javier Godino). But not before Romano has lazily rounded up some migrant workers who’d been employed in the area and beaten a confession out of them. Filing a complaint against Romano turns dire when Romano quickly rises in the ranks of the fascist government of Isobel Peron, and has the power to not only secretly release prisoners, but to order the death of enemies of the state.
Meanwhile, Morales has surrendered his life to his grief and his ghost-like quest for revenge, staking out train stations across Buenos Aires. And Esposito and Sandoval, their investigation stymied by official channels, opt to ignore orders and carry on. Their buffoonish break-in at the home of one of Gomez’s aged relatives is a tension-breaking moment of comedy, and one of
the movie’s two best scenes (the other is the hyperactively filmed apprehension of Gomez at a soccer match).
There is a seeming inevitability to events, despite everyone’s best efforts, from the investigation to Hastings’ non-starter relationship with Esposito. The sad longing that Darin and Villamil bring to their roles gives the movie its soul.
The Secret In Their Eyes is certainly the best movie I’ve seen this year (a weak year so far, granted), and deserved a spot in the best picture category on merit alone.
(This film is not yet rated)
jim.slotek@sunmedia.ca
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