Tell No One

Thrillers are notoriously big on jigsaw-like plotting and improbable narrative conveniences. Tell No One, based on American crime writer Harlan Coben's 2001 novel of the same name, certainly fits the bill. Had it been made in America it probably would have had a lot more stunt work and gun play but the advantage of Canet’s interpretation (he co-wrote the screenplay with Philippe Lefebvre who appears here as a police lieutenant) is that it is a good deal more restrained in its telling, Even so, how, one might ask, could so much murder and mayhem be perpetrated with so little disturbance to the routines of everyday life?  

The film opens with the brutal murder of Margot Beck (Marie-Josée Croze), wife to Mr Average paediatrician, Dr. Alex Beck (François Cluzet, an actor who looks remarkably like Dustin Hoffman). Fast-forward to 8 years later and the still-grieving Alex is sent an email that suggests that Margot is alive. Les flics, who were never convinced that he did not kill her, decide that they were right when a couple of bodies are found buried on Alex’s country property. Meanwhile another mysterious group also seem interested in Alex and Margot's past starts to seem murkier than anyone had suspected.

If initially the film has an engaging Chabrolian sense of dark family secrets gradually it segues into a more Chandleresque style of plotting with Alex as the sleuthing protagonist uncovering the dastardly ways of the wealthy and even indulging in some action-movie style devices before a rather prosaic denouement in which the plot's intricacies are explained by one of the characters.

Far-fetched as it is, Tell No One is an above-average genre film with excellent performances from a tip-top cast (including Kristin Scott-Thomas with a nearly flawless French accent) that you can watch to its end and just about forgive its liberties with the laws of probability.

 

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