Film Diary #2

A week before the Media and Film group ventured off to Paris, Professor Tung invited me to a French Film Festival at the Lincoln Center Theatre in New York City. We were going to see a film called No Le Dis A Personne, or Tell No One. Naturally, it was a French movie produced in 2006 that won many Cesar's, which are France's equivalent of the Oscars, including Best Film. As we sat down ready to watch this movie, I had forgotten the name of the movie. So, I asked a nice gentleman sitting in front of me what the name of the movie was. He told me that it was called Tell No One. After a brief introduction by the oranizer of the French Film Festival, she brought up Harlan Coben, the author of the book that the movie is based on. Ironically enough, it turned out that the man I asked the name of the movie was Harlan Coben, the author himself!! After I laughed to myself, we all got ready to watch the movie.

The movies revolves around the weird and strange situations that have been thrown at Alexander Beck, a pediatrician (who is played by François Cluzet, who bears a striking resemblance to Dustin Hoffman). One day, Beck takes his long time love and wife, Margot, to Lake Champlane(?), to do some late night swimming. An argument arises between the two while in the middle of the lake, and Margot swims off to the docks. She walks inland some and Alexander hears screams coming from within the docks. Beck gets scared and swims off as fast as he can to see what has happened to his beloved wife. As soon as he gets onto the dock, Beck gets attacked by a mysterious figure, assumed to be the man that did something to his wife. Beck wakes up some time later in a hospital bed. A police officer comes into his room to tell him the bad news, that his wife Margot had been killed. The markings on Margot's disfigured body were evidence to prove that a certain serial killer that the police had been after for a long time was the culprit. The police eventually caught the killer and arrested him.

Fast forward to eight years later, and Dr. Beck is just trying to put the pieces of his life back together. He becomes very focused on his work as a pediatrician. However, on the anniversary of his wife's murder, two bodies mysteriously turn up at the same location of where they found Margot's body. From the looks of the body, they had been dead for many years. This opens up the case of Margot Beck once again. On top of this, the police feel that there is enough evidence to implicate that Alexander is the one who murdered these two men. On the same day, Beck is at his office when he receives an e-mail from an unknown e-mail address that has a phrase in it that only himself and his late wife knew, an inside joke kind of thing. The e-mail also contains a link of recent surveillance camera footage shows Margot, looking alive and well. This is the point where Alexander Beck's life turns completely upside down.

Now, the message Beck received, presumably from his wife, says that they are both being watched. Beck is now on the run from police, while there is a group of gangs that are strong-arming his friends into giving up any information that might be useful to finding Beck and killing him. Looking for help, Alexander turns to his sister, Anne. Anne convinces her lesbian lover, Helene, to hire a high profile lawyer named Elisabeth Feldman to help Alexander prove his innocence. While working on the case, Alex seemingly disappears and continues to stay on the run from the police and the group of thugs, while at the same time looking for his long lost wife, who has finally reappeared and has convinced Beck that she is still alive, but why is she still alive? He gets help from a gangster whose child Alex helped get better. The gangster feels as if he owes Beck one, so he goes out of his way to keep Beck safe.

I don't really want to spoil the ending, all I will say is go see this movies. There are many twists and turns, it is absolutely spectacular. I felt that the actors did a fine job in portraying the characters from Coben's book. Seeing as how Coben's book is based in New York, the writers must have had a hard time trying to convert the settings and everything to Paris, but I feel that it was an excellent movie. Another movie with subtitles, but you get past that very quickly. It got to the point to where I felt like I was listening to the characters say what they were saying, when in reality I was reading on the screen while watching the movie. THe twist at the end is superb, and I really enjoyed this foreign movie.