En secret

I have never seen a performance by Elizabeth Olsen before this, assuming she was about as "good" as her sisters, meaning not good. But she gave a really great performance. And to stand on her own next to Jessica Lang, that is high props. She is extremely beautiful and really is something to watch in the future.

Other than the distraction of a few Harry Potter Alums I was really taken with this movie, it was a very well written storyline and I didn't see the end coming. The actors were well casted and all carried their own. Having put this movie on the back burner for so long i'm really glad I watched it now. Wish I had watched it sooner. A real sleeper surprise.

It was not the first time Jessica Lange had played an overpossessive mother;just check "hush" .

The most famous French version of the novel is Marcel Carné's (1953)starring Simone Signoret and Raf Vallone ;in both versions ,it's the mother-in law who walks out with the honors and literally blows her co-stars off the stage :both Sylvie and Lange are the stand-outs .

Whereas Carné's version was transferred to modern times and sometimes dramatically wandered from the novel ,this one is much more faithfull. Locating the action in the 19th century was more relevant for at the time an orphan girl without a dowry had little choice :her marriage with sickly Camille made more sense than in the fifties .The pictures depicting the gloomy shop are dark and close to a living hell where the poor wife finds solace "in secret" between two domino games ;these games are given a convincing treatment and as one of the players says :"it smells mortuary" and not only because he works in such a lugubrious place.

The Lange /Tom Felton (who sometimes recall Terence Stamp)pair overshadows somewhat the lovers ; Madame Raquin is in awe of (and in love with) her offspring and afraid to be alone (hence the second marriage).But in the second part,if look could kill,hers certainly would.

located first near Vernon ,Normandy ,although the landscapes do not evoke this region ,but the cinematography on location is really dazzling.

If you suppress sexuality and love long enough, it will break out eventually. And this is what happens here at some point. There are some very racy scenes, that while we do not get so much naked flesh to see, might be a bit too much for some viewers. Love can be freeing, but it can also be like a prison.

And while we do probably have the one Olsen sister who can actually act in this, this might be too much even for her. Especially towards the end, her act seems to be breaking (no pun intended). It gets pretty weird too, too weird maybe for some, but that's something you'll have to see for yourself. I kinda liked it, though the characters seem to lose a bit of their credibility. But it happens ... or it could happen

Young Therese (later played by Elizabeth Olsen) is left in the custody of her aunt Madame Raquin (Jessica Lange) by her father who leaves for Africa. Madame Raquin knows that he will never return and assigns Therese to be the caregiver to her sickly son Camille. Time passes by and Therese gets used to the life of confinement in the Raquin home, caring for Camille (Tom Felton) and eventually surrenders to an arranged and unexciting marriage to him. Then comes an opportunity dor the family to move from Vernon to Paris where Camille gets a clerical job, Madame Raquin rents a shop and sets up their home upstairs. One evening, Camille brings home his old friend Laurent (Oscar Isaac), a dark haired, handsome man, and a new world of excitement and adultery beckons Therese. Laurent and Therese embark on a clandestine and passionate affair that spells doom for Camille as they together hatch a plan to eliminate him.

Everything proceeds according to their plan with Camille out of the way, and the family's well wishers insist upon Therese now marrying Laurent, looking at the misery of the women, of course totally unaware of the sinister plot that led to the situation. Once married, however, the couple is soon consumed by the guilt of their crime and the ominous presence of Camille's shadow in the relationship turns matters bitter. During one such friction, Madame Raquin also learns about the truth and turns antagonistic, albeit she can do little as she is now paralyzed physically.

"In Secret" is an adaptation of the novel Therese Raquin written by Emile Zola, and could have been a tragedy of an epic Shakespearean dimension. The drama noir is accentuated by the dark setting in Paris with a depressing and poorly illuminated shop and house above. Director Charlie Stratton however makes a half hearted attempt to capitalize on the dark setting and the resultant mood with an unconvincing treatment of the psychological tussle with conscience, thus turning the tragedy into a rather soft and mellow climax. Not enough was done to delineate the "blood on the hands" state of the doomed couple that could have emphasized the extreme consequence of the once passionate relationship. Elizabeth Olsen and Oscar Isaac do their bit, but Jessica Lange is the showstopper here with a powerful portrayal of Madame Raquin, a controlling matriarch with firm hands on the reins of her family.

When I usually go to see movies which cover a past period of time, I take the trouble of not reading too much about the background or skipping the book it is based on, so that I may judge the product purely on its merits and the strengths of the entire production crew that went into it's making. It pleases me to share with you that "In Secret" ranks as one such fine effort, right from the beginning it transports you to the mid-1800s era of rural France, and tells us the story of little Therese Raquin (Elizabeth Olsen). This effort has good production values, for not even a single moment does your attention drift away from the development of the characters, seeing them grow up, make the ties binding to the extent that Therese clearly suffers from the over bearing domination of her mother-in-law, played brilliantly by Jessica Lange. She gives the entire movie a continuation of the thread for the story, at times you feel her looks, demeanor and restrained but piercing performance, towards the end, are very absorbing. Hats off to the casting crew for making the right call here, she was born to play this role.

I wish to thank my fellow cinema mates - Isabelle and Lisa (you know who you are!) - for sharing their insights with me post the viewing. Correct use of lighting does give this piece the right feel of the suffocating & dreary lower working class Paris conditions, the same dark focus and clever use of perspective subtly nudge the viewer into feeling very tense as the story of betrayal develops. The very same way the characters demons grow, speaks to the way all of them absorb the souls of the players and share them with us flawlessly. As my fellow cinema watchers also shared with me, this movie is not for everyone, and only serious lovers of subtle simple but powerful period stories will appreciate this work. I suspect they are also right in anticipating that we may see many more French literary pieces coming to life on the big screen in the next few years. I give this movie an 8 star rating, simply because I appreciated every frame contributing to the telling of the story, no wasted effort or superfluous diversions whatsoever.