![]() It’s the intriguing conclusion to a much better movie, but here - tacked on to the end of a genre exercise that’s hardly suspenseful enough to sell the mystery of its basic premise, let alone leverage the “is he or isn’t he?” of it all into something richer - such heady abstractions don’t quite fit with the rest of the house. We do eventually learn the truth about the man who Maja and her all-American husband (a well-cast Chris Messina, master of playing clenched men who live their entire lives bracing for emasculation) have bound and gagged in their basement, but not before Adler and Ryan Covington’s threadbare script is able to insist that it doesn’t really matter that Maja’s past followed her across the Atlantic regardless of whether or not her neighbor played an awful role in it. ‘The Holdovers’ Review: Alexander Payne and Paul Giamatti Reunite for a Sensitive but Slightly Underwhelming Throwback And yet, the most effective stretches of “The Secrets We Keep” are the ones that seed a little doubt in Maja’s recollection, shake our confidence in a character whose convictions only grow more enflamed, and make us wonder if this sloppy piece of polite exploitation might actually be sophisticated enough to grapple with the consequences of its heroine getting things very wrong indeed. ![]() Aldo Raine wasn’t able to carve a swastika into all of their foreheads before they went into hiding. The perpetrators of the Holocaust scattered as far and wide as the diasporas they attempted to destroy, and Lt. The odds are slim - and memory is a murky body of water even before you filter it through the stuff of historical trauma - but such a twist of fate is hardly inconceivable. While that makes for perhaps a compelling message, it doesn’t make for engaging viewing, and that means that The Secrets We Keep becomes quite a slog to get through.A listless, half-baked, vaguely Hitchcockian thriller about a Romani Holocaust survivor (a flushed Noomi Rapace) who’s trying to make a new life for herself in a Mayberry-like American suburb during the 1950s, Yuval Adler’s “ The Secrets We Keep” hinges on a single question that it struggles to ask with the weight it demands and/or answer with the grindhouse-like glee it encourages: Is the friendly-seeming family man whose accented voice she recognizes in town one afternoon ( Joel Kinnaman) actually one of the Nazi goons who executed her sister towards the end of the war? It is difficult to root for anyone in this film, as they are all morally repugnant. The issue then is in the story itself and the morality on display. They make the moral complexities on display fully realised, drawing deep from the well of both the righteousness of anger, and the mistrust of memory. Rapace is a powerhouse, and even Kinnaman is doing good work. The answer, alas, is as complex as the tale being told.įrom a performance perspective, everyone is on fine form. The question, then, becomes whether the drama is tense and compelling enough to be worth a watch. It isn’t at all an enjoyable watch rather a complex emotional storm. The torture feels raw and visceral, and tonally everything is muted colours. Lewis, meanwhile, is unsure - it’s been years, and how can she be so sure? Thomas is desperately trying to convince them both that he is not the man she seeks, but is he telling the truth? Maja is certain that Thomas is her man, and is desperate to punish him. This triple-hander focuses on the tension between Maja, Thomas and Lewis. ![]() ![]() The Secrets We Keep is fundamentally a slow-burn piece about the lies we tell, the burden of secrets, and what it takes to convince someone you’re finally telling the truth. Maja and her husband Lewis (Chris Messina) kidnap Thomas and keep him in a basement, as they try and force him to admit his past. The pain floods back, however, when she stumbles across Thomas (Joel Kinnaman) in her small suburban town - a long way from the heart of Europe, where she believes he killed her sister before changing his name and fleeing to the US. In post-WWII America, Maja (Noomi Rapace) is trying to live a normal life and forget her horrific experiences in the war. ![]()
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