‘The Secret in Their Eyes,” dark-horse winner of the 2009 foreign-language Oscar, is a nearly perfect love story/murder mystery that unfortunately falters at the end.
The story is built around Benjamin Esposito (Ricardo Darin), a retired criminal-court investigator unable to rid his mind of a 25-year-old murder.
The victim was a beautiful married woman who was raped and beaten before being slain. (Scenes of her violated, nude body might be difficult for some viewers to take but are essential to the story.)
Esposito is also obsessed by a very-alive woman in his office, Cornell-educated Irene (Soledad Villamil), who was a court assistant at the time of the 1974 murder and is now a powerful judge.
Esposito and his boozer partner Sandoval (Guillermo Francella) track down the killer — there’s a heart-pounding chase in a soccer stadium — who confesses when Irene, in a brilliant piece of strategy, questions his manhood.
But the killer is prematurely freed by Argentina’s corrupt judicial system and becomes an agent of the country’s repressive secret police, putting Esposito’s life at risk.
Esposito also is struck by the victim’s husband, Ricardo (Pablo Rago), and his unwavering devotion to his dead wife, the full extent of which isn’t revealed until the end.
The director, Juan Jose Campanella — who has helmed numerous episodes of TV’s “Law & Order: SVU” and “30 Rock” — effortlessly goes back and forth between 2000, when the movie opens, and 1974.
The denouement comes as a shock, and should have ended the film, but Campanella chose to tack on a resolution to Esposito’s obsession with Irene. Still, don’t let that keep you from this otherwise flawless film.