REVIEW: 'The Secret in Their Eyes'RSS

REVIEW: 'The Secret in Their Eyes'

Argentinian thriller that won the Best Foreign Film Oscar at the 2010 Academy Awards. It follows the interweaving personal lives of a team of state prosecutors on a 25-year-spanning manhunt. Now playing in cinemas.

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It’s rare that a film can carry multiple flashbacks without reminding its audience they’re sitting in the cinema. But The Secret in Their Eyes, the Argentine film that won this year’s Oscar for best foreign film, manages an effortless game of cat and mouse between the 1970s and the late 90s. It’s impossible not to get caught up in this epic tale of unresolved love and despair.

It helps of course that this is a hugely gripping tale, a thriller poised on the edge of parallel stories. First is the unresolved case of a murdered young bride, the heartbroken husband who spends the rest of his life in the shadow of this devastation. The second is the unrequited love story between two former colleagues, now a judge and a state court criminal investigator, whose electrifying reunion after 25 years is entirely convincing thanks to outstanding performances from leads Ricardo Darin (as Benjamin Esposito) and Soledad Villamil (as Irene Menendez Hastings). Guillermo Francella as Esposito’s alcoholic partner adds levity to a story so deeply weighted in time and memory, as does the cynical office banter. The make-up department must also be praised for making it almost impossible to tell the actors’ real ages.

Juan Jose Campanella, best known for his work on American shows Law & Order: SVU and House, combines the romanticism of European film-making and the raciness of American police procedurals with aplomb; never does Argentina’s dirty political history interfere with the plot, except when the case is cruelly interrupted as the result of hair-ripping bureaucracy.

Ultimately, the viewer is left with the sense that time doesn’t necessarily heal wounds, that unresolved quandaries will forever shape our destinies. It’s a powerful piece of film-making that can so stylishly do that.