Un secret (A Secret) - 22 August 2010

Principal cast: Mathieu Amalric, Patrick Bruel, Cecile De France, Ludivine Sagnier, Julie Depardieu, Valentin Vigourt, Quentin Dubuis

Film notes: This absorbing story of a complex secret in the life of a Parisian family moves between three time settings: in 1955 a boy becomes aware that his parents' golden marriage and their efforts to erase their Jewishness have some common wartime past that he cannot grasp; during WWII, a love triangle is enmeshed in the horrors of the Holocaust as it threatens an urbane Jewish family, pushed to flee Paris for the countryside; in 1985, the boy grown to manhood tries to lay to rest the family ghosts that have troubled him all his life. Director Claude Miller (The Accompanist; La Petite Lili) juggles a lot of narrative balls in order to show vast social forces playing themselves out in the most intimate spaces of individual lives. When the sexual attraction between two French Jews corresponds to the Aryan ideal of physical prowess and body type, a passionate love story is shot through with the ethical implications of looks and racial identity, and with the burden of what it means to survive. The secrecy in which the ensuing marriage is founded revisits its psychic costs upon the son.

Three enduring themes of French post-war cinema come together in Un secret: the child's-eye-view of somehow deceptive adult life; the raw humanity that is revealed by a genuine love triangle; the impact on specific lives of the French experience of the Holocaust. French audiences flocked to see the film, drawn by the powerful themes, the fine cast representing a new generation of stars, and the rare pleasure of a handsome, big-budget, home-grown costume drama.