Ein Geheimnis

Since the structure of the movie, works with many flashbacks, there is not a big surprise in the end. The acting is more than decent (even I recognize many french actors and I'm not really familiar with most of them) and the story deserves to be told. Although I'm not sure, if it really is based on a true story, it's still a gripping story ... unfortunately, this movie does underscore many things. And while sometimes it might work out to underplay a few things, it doesn't work in the favor of the movie ...

I watched it with another person and he kind of despised the movie. He thought the theme was nice, but was unhappy with the handling of that subject matter. I do agree with him to some degree, but I think it would be unfair to the actors and the (overall) story to give it a lesser rating ...

Having read the comments on this site, after having heard a friend (whose opinions aren't always reliable) say I must see it, I expected a marginally good picture when I rented the DVD. OK, I thought, another personal story about French and German anti-Semitism in WW II. This time my friend was right! A Secret was a knockout. It hit home and revived childhood memories. And it's as much or more about pre-WW II & post-WW II as it is about during. I won't repeat what others have rightly said about the uniformly excellent acting or the directing or the photography, etc. Among the things that hit home to me were the child's (or children's) point of view--SO on target--and the very different types of Jews portrayed in this film. Even though I "knew" (intuited) what would happen to some characters, what actually did happen was better than my imaginings. Its reference to the big illusion (La grande illusion) was apt (as well as the one character who actually saw it). More than one illusion is shattered by this pic, which like my friend I highly recommend.

Well, I'm very definitely with those who praise this film. I think it's quite excellent.

It has many qualities that I value. To begin with, the narrative is entirely believable. I particularly liked the fact that one of the principal characters was a Jew who didn't didn't care much about being a Jew and felt no need to proclaim his Jewishness to the world: there are many Jews like that and they are as entitled to respect as a non-practising Christian or Muslim or anyone else. The knowledge of the son that he's a disappointment to his father rang true. The acceptance by some Jews of the Nazi laws, and the belief of those same Jews that if they obey the laws, wear the star, stay away from public swimming pools, then they will be all right. The desire of those who live through the holocaust to put it behind them rather than dwell on it.

I like its directness and understatement. There are no histrionics. The story is told; the audience observes and draws its own conclusions.

The acting and directing are uniformly outstanding. I'd never had much time for Cécile de France, but she is perfect in this rôle. Patrick Bruel as the athletic father is just as good, and Julie Dépardieu as the family friend and the three actors who play the son at different times of his life are up there too; in fact, it's unfair to leave anyone out.

The director Claude Miller deserves special mention. I haven't seen any of his other films, but I'll look out for him from now on. He handles the film with absolute confidence, never obtruding, but conveying every nuance without faltering. This is a classic example of how simplicity, directness and lack of elaboration can add to the power of a story.

This film deserves much more than it's current user rating of 6.7.

All François knew was that his father wasn't overly fond of him. Part of it may have been because he wasn't as athletic as his parents. His father would get upset when he talked of an imaginary "brother."

No one talked of the family secret until he was 14 and Louise (Julie Depardieu) decided he should know. She tells him of life during WWII, and his father's first wife, and his son. Unbeknownst to him, they were all Jews, even though his father never practiced his faith. During the war they escaped France. All except his wife (Ludivine Sagnier) and son. She decided to demonstrate her independence at the wrong time. Of course, she was also upset that her husband (Patrick Bruel) couldn't keep his eyes off her brother's wife (Cécile De France). Who could?

What happened didn't become known until François (Mathieu Amalric) was older. We, the audience knew what was going to happen, but the Jews at the time had no clue. Julie Depardieu really excelled in this engrossing tale. Cécile De France was also very good. It was a brilliant work of art.

One of the big achievements of Un Secret which must be noted is that the director, Claude Miller, doesn't entirely sympathize with his characters or make them out to be all completely good Jews. They're not. This is a film concerning the holocaust that doesn't just make a blanket statement like "Nazis = Bad". No, there were Jews who were in denial, and tried to cloud over the horrible fact that was upon all of Europe, and indeed it's when the film takes its most dissecting view at the flaws of these characters that the veneer is stripped away of completely innocent people being swept up in the maelstrom. While Miller obviously acknowledges and shows the horror of anti-semitism in France (one brief scene in a classroom showing Night and Fog is especially startling) and of the rise of Hitler, he puts his eye on the Grinberg family and what really happened between François Grimbert's parents (name changed when he was a kid) before and during World War 2.

Miller's approach with Un Secret is a tricky one structurally, and it doesn't quite find it's footing until a third of the way into the film. He tries to find a back-and-forth-and-back form of dealing with three periods of time: 1930s, 1950s/1960s and 1985 when everybody is older and it turns to black and white (an opposite touch that works, for a moment), and it's only effective in about the first five minutes. I became wary of those sudden jumps to the 1985 portion of the film, where we see an old Maxime Nathan Grinberg (Patrick Bruel) grieving over the loss of his dog and his son trying to find him, and found it didn't strike anywhere near as well as the 50s scenes. On top of this, after all of the film has ended, that huge chunk of the film with the focus on that first marriage of Grinberg's with Hannah and his very obvious but eventually-acted-on infatuation with Tania (very sexy Cecile de France) was far more effective dramatically and tonally than anything else in the film.

This is not to say Un Secret doesn't cast a very fascinating look into this particular boy's lack of perspective and of his father's determination to compete on a physical level with the Germans, to almost "be" one in a perfectionist sense athletically, and how this one secret is part of scarred memory, attachment to one's faith and religion and who they are, and love and lust. The cast is generally excellent, with Bruel, De France and Sagnier delivering work with nuance and exquisite, painful emotions that resonate from one into the next scene (Sagnier is so good she gets us to feel repulsed, or at least taken completely aback, by what she does while in hiding). And the moods of joy and despair in a Jewish family circa 1930s and 1940s- and the subsequent self-imposed shame of people in Europe even after the war ended- is captured with some real power and accuracy.

But Miller also can't completely fix together his narrative; he feels the need to jump around as if it will create a really intriguing rhythm, where if he stepped back and told it without sudden jumps or surreal bits like the "brother" in the boy's bedroom at night the film would benefit. There is also a lack of a real resolution; the 1985 scene just didn't cut it for me as far as an unspoken father/son thing, and despite it sounding conventional a confrontation of the boy to his parents might have brought something more interesting than the uneven subtlety of the ending. A lot of this is so hearth-breaking in its true dimensions and probing of the subject that the only real disappointment is how it doesn't fell... complete with itself.