I first saw veteran French director Claude Miller’s “A Secret” at a film festival last year. I was underwhelmed. I saw it again a few weeks ago, and was more impressed, although still bothered by its shameless sentimentality.
Based on true events, it tells of secrets harbored by a French Jewish family torn asunder by sexual passion and the Holocaust.
The cast is first-rate, with pixie-haired Cécile de France – playing an athletic, head-turning mother – as the centerpiece.
She is backed by Patrick Bruel as her husband; Julie Depardieu (Gerard’s sister), playing a family friend and masseuse who spills the beans to a bewildered boy; Mathieu Amalric (the stricken writer in “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”) as the boy grown into an adult; and Ludivine Sagnier (“A Girl Cut in Two”) as a tortured soul who makes a crucial decision.
The fractured timeline covers five decades, which Miller weaves together, with the past shot in color and the present in black and white. Still, the soapy climax is unnecessary.
In French, with English subtitles. Running time: 110 minutes. Not rated (sexuality). At the Paris and the IFC Center.