Tell No One [Ne le dis à personne] (2006)

My very first movie at the French Film Fest this year which is going on at GSC Cinemas at Pavilion, 1 Utama and Midvalley from the 8th to the 16th of May, is of course Tell No One. Which is a drama/thriller type of movie for which I forgot the synopsis before the show commenced so I couldn't explain to my movie date what the movie is about (since he didn't have the chance to read it himself), so thank God that the movie is really great. ;-)

This French thriller was directed by Guillaume Canet and based on the novel by Harlan Coben, first released in 2006. The movie stars François Cluzet as the lead - Alex Beck, a doctor who has slowly been putting his life back together after his wife Margot was murdered by a serial killer.

Eight years on, Alex is doing well enough until he finds himself implicated in the murder of two people, with plenty of evidence pointing to him as the killer even though he knows nothing of the crimes. The same day, Alex receives an e-mail that appears to be from Margot (Marie-Josée Croze), which includes a link to a video clip that seems to be recent and features his late wife looking alive and well. Due to a message from Margot that asked him to meet her at a certain place (and as such, refusing to get arrested), Alex goes on the run while he and his lawyer struggle to find out the truth about the murder as well as Margot's reappearance.

One of the highlights (or dampener depends on how you see it), is the manual censorship we witnessed that night. During the opening scenes, Alex and Margot were shown on a family estate by the lake/pond for a holiday, and Margot decided to jump in for a swim, naked... So as she stripped off, our nice projectionist had to manually put a piece of paper over the projector such that we were unable to see the entire screen. Including the subtitles, so I guess it was just as well that the dialogue during those scenes weren't too numerous even though they were still conversing with each other. This process of rushing to cover the projector was repeated a few more times, variously during Alex stripping, two of them getting out of the water etc. We were laughing our ass off due to the incredulity of it all.

That aside, the movie proved to be fast paced enough without outpacing our minds (which need time to process subtitles as well as movie scenes) and I found the characters featured different but interesting, like this strong-woman who is used by the bad guy to torture people into giving up information. The head of the bad guys, who looks a little like ex-Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi and also Alex's sister and her lesbian girlfriend (it wasn't immediately obvious, but heh I guessed it earlier than my date). =p

By the way, I think the sister was the lead in Lady Chatterley. Am looking forward to more next week, cross fingers they'll be just as good if not better!