DVD Review: El Secreto De Sus Ojos (2)

WHEN A MAN LOVES A WOMAN

"A man can change anything. His face, his home, his family, his girlfriend, his religion, his God. But there's one thing he can't change. He can't change his passion." This is the underlying refrain of Juan Jose Campanella's highly stylised, superbly crafted Argentinean film El Secreto De Sus Ojos or The Secret In Their Eyes, which pipped two equally formidable films, Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon and Jacques Audiard's Un Prophete, to win this year's Best Foreign Film Oscar. All three films are dramatically different. Yet, they are bound together by a sophisticated, tightly controlled approach to story-telling. One is a German period piece about austere cruelty. The other is a contemporary French prison thriller about survival. This one is a whodunit-cum-love story intertwined so beautifully that both aspects of the narrative are equally important to the schematic and irrevocably tied together.

The film derives its title from two telling photographs. One, is a group photo with the murder suspect looking at the woman he's later accused of raping and killing. The other has a middle-aged legal counselor staring at his boss through the corner of his eye, at her engagement party. The story shuttles between 1974, when the murder takes place, and 1999, when the said counselor, Benjamin Esposito (Ricardo Darin), now retired from service, is trying write a novel based on the murder of Liliana Coloto, the gorgeous wife of a bank clerk, Ricardo Morales (Pablo Rago), and the woman being stared at in the first photograph. He brings the manuscript to his former boss Irene Menendez Hastings (Soledad Villamil) the subject of his unrequited love of 25 years. Yet, Irene's eyes have always reflected her immense attraction to him. It is Benjamin's class, age, social status and male ego that's prevented him from expressing himself.

Their unspoken feelings for one another are fused with the unsolved mystery of young Morales' wife. And the emptiness of Morales' life is reflected in Benjamin's deep sense of regret. Both men need catharsis and writing a novel seems like the most logical way of resolving the situation.  Except, real life can sometimes be stranger than fiction, as Benjamin eventually discovers through the shocking, if suitably justified denouement. And somewhere underneath the human drama there also appears to be a political statement about the corruption and chaos in Argentina leading up to the military coup of 1976.

Campanella sails between past and present and between the two strands of the narrative with the ease of a skilled craftsman. The mood he creates through pacing, composition, lighting and editing is one of simmering tension. Plot elements are revealed very cleverly at carefully chosen intervals and the heaviness of the narrative is diluted by sharp dialogue and wit. Felix Monti's cinematography is reminiscent of Pedro Almodovar's visual style dominated by bright reds and greens; only here, they are filmed in slightly softer tones and the entire film has a warm tint.

The centrepiece of course is a five minute long sequence that begins with a helicopter shot over a football stadium; the camera swoops down on the action and then on to the stands where Benjamin and his partner Pablo Sandoval (Guillermo Francella) are cutting through the crowd looking for the murder suspect, find him and then chase him through the underbelly of the stadium till he finally runs out on the field and is captured. It appears to be a single shot, although how it could have been achieved is impossible to imagine.  

El Secreto De Sus Ojos boasts of a cast that's absolutely stellar -- from the smallest parts to the principal characters. Particularly Darin and Villamil, who are often framed in tight close-ups and have to communicate through their eyes the feelings they find difficult to express in words, are sensational. Both have to traverse a time span of 25 years and a wide range of emotions.

An exceptional feature of the film is, it's just as rewarding to watch a second time round, even though the sense of anticipation is no longer there. You can still sit back and marvel at how meticulously the director has constructed this tale of loneliness, fear, love and memory.