Susan Granger’s review of “The Secret in Their Eyes” (Sony Pictures Classics)
Most observers were stunned when this Argentinean film won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar – mainly because to many, outside of Academy members, this part thriller/part tale of unrequited love was unknown.
The police procedural begins in 1999 in or near Buenos Aires, as retired criminal court investigator Benjamin Esposito (Ricardo Darin) reopens a long-abandoned rape/murder case for the novel he’s writing about it. He uses that as a pretext to reconnect with the woman he worked for and silently loved, Irene Mendez-Hastings (Soledad Villamil), who subsequently became a powerful judge. Interspersed are flashbacks to the 1970s, when the country was descending from an elected government into military dictatorship. That’s when the victim, a beautiful married woman, was brutally raped and killed. Esposito first saw her violated, naked body lying on her death bed and witnessed her husband’s (Pablo Rago) devotion. Back then, Esposito, Mendez-Hastings and another colleague, heavy-drinking Sandoval (Guillermo Francella), tried in vain to circumnavigate the corrupt, bureaucratic judicial system to convict the perpetrator, rather than railroad some poor soul who had no other recourse. But the killer went free and became an agent of Argentina’s repressive secret police, which placed Esposito in great jeopardy. Now, propelled by his obsession, the trio may be able to crack the cold case, find the culprit, pursue him and coerce him to confess.
In Spanish with English subtitles, it’s directed and edited by Juan Jose Campanella, whose credits include the comedic “Son of the Bride” along with “Law & Order: SVU,” “House” and “30 Rock” episodes. I suspect if one is fluent in Spanish, there are more subtle nuances than I was able to perceive, because those who understood the language laughed aloud numerous times when the English subtitles contained nothing humorous.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Secret in Their Eyes” is an engrossing, often surprising 7, but I’m still bewildered why it triumphed over better foreign films like Israel’s “Ajami,” Peru’s “The Milk of Sorrow,” France’s “The Prophet” and Germany’s “The White Ribbon.”
