Country:
Argentina
Recognizable Faces:
Apparently, if you live in Argentina, you'll recognize...
Ricardo Darin
Soledad Villamill
Pablo Rago
Javier Godino
Guillermo Francella
...and hell..I don't know. I'm not Argentinian, so I'm not sure who these people are.
Directed by:
Juan Jose Campanella
El Secreto de Sus Ojos won the Oscar in 2009 for best foreign movie. For the commoner, that Oscar-winner is like a classic novel. Everybody say they seen it, but nobody wants to sit through it. I don't know if that makes me special, but I like to sit through something different once in a while.
Since Josie and her sister were going to see Shrek 4 this week-end, I took the opportunity to weasel myself into the cinema to see something thicker...like an Argentinian murder drama for example.
STORYTELLING
Never read it, but according to IMDB, El Secreto de Sus Ojos is adapted from a novel by writer Eduardo Sacheri. Pretty good novel that must be, because J.J Campanella's movie's strong suit is its gripping, visceral story. A dirty, murky murder movies like any noir-obsessed intellectuals would like.
Benjamin Esposito (Darin) used to work at the tribunal with sexy love interest Irene Menendez Hastings (Villamill). After retirement, Esposito comes back to her colleague, saying he wants to write a novel about a case that happened twenty-five years ago. The Morales affair as he calls it, had been haunting him with a mean feeling of unfinished business.
Twnety-five years ago, Liliano Colotto has been brutally raped and killed, leaving her husband Ricardo Morales ravaged by grief and despair. Touched by the distress of a loving husband, Esposito, in the prime of his career back then, goes on an off-the-record investigation along with his sidekick employee Sandoval to do justice to a man that the system is forsaking. Esposito's journey to find the killer will be nothing resembling to a straightforward investigation.
DIRECTING
Like I said, I haven't read the Sacheri novel, but I have a feeling this is a very accurate movie adaptation. Campanella took very few liberties with his camera. There's a double layered fiction game where the fiction that Esposito writes is a fiction within the movie itself. Campanella shows a sense of humor with the lives of his character that is enjoyable.
Other than that, Campanella sticks to the story. He follows his characters across two generations of murder mystery and passionate love. It's a respectful approach to an adaptation, but it's also safe and easy. The biggest flaw of El Secreto de Sus Ojos is that despite it's quality,many directors could've done it better.
ACTING
I fell under the spell of Pablo Rago. The way he plays grief with strenght and fire is very touching. The eyes in question in the title are his. They are the eyes of pure love that haunt Benjamin Esposito at night. Rago is bound to get picked up by Hollywood.
Darin and Villamill make a decent jobs at playing the impossible lovers, but they are a bit common. So is Javier Godino as Isidoro Gomez. Guillermo Francella is the other shining star of the movie as hopeless alcoholic Sandoval. He's funny, touching and and really accurate for the dark tone of the movie. He's also bound to great things.
INTEREST
The main stunt of El Secreto de Sus Ojos is to have built a very good noir movie around a love story. It's a gritty and visceral tale built around the destructive power of the most beautiful of emotions. It's quite the storytelling feat.
Like my good friend Mustafa told me when we discussed the movie: "It's good, but it's not a game changer". That's the best way you can describe El Secreto de Sus Ojos . There's a simplicity and a faitfulness to the novel that makes it miss the mark of timelessness by a nose.
NOTE: A-
