TELL NO ONE

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I had high hopes of this French adaptation of the Harlan Coben thriller given that it won several prestigious awards.  Alas, it failed to deliver.

Coben is a writer who is deft at pacing his novels so that each plot turn or revelation adds to a momentum that usually leads to an exciting conclusion.  Sadly, this film didn't manage to do this, and instead of being gripped I became progressively less engaged so that by the time we get to a prolonged unwrapping of the mystery I had tuned out.

It starts off as an intriguing mystery to be sure. Dr Beck is a widower whose wife was murdered in strange circumstances eight years previously yet now he starts getting messages that seem to be from her. Can she be alive? If so, where's she been in the interim?  Who was murdered in her place?

If this wasn't mystery enough some other dead bodies turn up, and there are some very bad people keeping tabs on Beck in the hope he will lead them to his wife.  And the police seem determined to pin at least one murder on Beck.

The explanation for all of this is complicated to say the least and it involves a lot of shenanigans from the period before Madame Beck's murder.  The makers of the film do a poor job of conveying all this clearly.  For example, I got very confused between two sets of photos of Beck's wife which seemed of some importance.

But maybe the real problem is that the plot they're working with is simply too convoluted and preposterous.

The Rotten Tomatoes consensus states that this film is "heart-pounding and heart-wrenching", in which case I clearly lack a heart. There is a romance at the centre of the story between Beck and his wife but it was an inert one as far as I was concerned. 

Still I'm always happy to see Kristin Scott Thomas turn up in a film (unless it’s ‘The English Patient’).

RATING: x Curb Your Enthusiasm

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