As she does so, the soundtrack plays a pastiche of the sort of suspenseful string music one might hear in an Alfred Hitchcock film from the period, like Vertigo or Rear Window or, as suggested by a cinema marquee Maja and the man happen to pass, North by Northwest. Maja is completely convinced this European, who says he’s a Swiss national named Thomas, is really a German named Carl who did unspeakable things towards the end of the war 15 years earlier.Īt first, she simply stalks him, wearing perfect little 50s sunglasses all the while. They all start to come out when Maja spots a tall blond man (Joel Kinnaman, in fact, and, like Rapace, originally from Sweden) with just the faintest German accent. But as the title rather suggests, there are secrets afoot quite a few in fact. VERDICT – 3.Set in the late 1950s in a geographically vague American suburban town where fin-tailed cars roll sedately through the streets and women wear dresses shaped like great silent bells, local doctor Lewis (Chris Messina) and his Romanian-born wife Maja (Noomi Rapace) and their grade-school son Patrick (Jackson Dean Vincent) look like everyone else pursuing the American dream. “The Secrets We Keep” is now showing in select theaters and on VOD. Overall it’s not a bad way to spend 97 minutes. But it’s still very much a genre film albeit one that is well acted, consistently entertaining, and that dabbles in its themes more than explores them. “The Secrets We Keep” taps into that yet on a more personal level. It was a time when aftershocks from the second world war were still being felt all over the world. Shot mostly in Louisiana, Adler and his production designer Nate Jones nail the look and feel of the late 1950’s and of small-town America. This ends up forming the central conflict of the entire film. More urgently, he has the determine whether to go with Maja’s instincts or stop her from crossing a line and making a mistake she will come to regret. He’s still processing the slew of secrets hidden by his wife for 15 years – her family’s Gypsy background, her time in a war camp, the rape, the murder of her sister. That leaves Messina’s Lewis, a man utterly in the dark who wants to believe his wife but understands the ramifications of her being wrong. Kinnaman’s sincerity and restraint make a strong case. He says he is Swiss not German, and that he moved to America to start a family with his wife Rachel (Amy Seimetz). He insists she’s mistaken and his name is Thomas. But the question lingers, does she have the right guy? There is no evidence and nothing to go on other than her feelings and flashes of old memories. Seeing this man again forces her to relive all of her past horrors. Her Maja is a woman full of repressed sorrow and painful secrets. Rapace is terrific, giving a strong two-sided performance that requires both physicality and emotional heft. But it’s at its best when it lets the triad of Rapace, Kinnaman, and Messina navigate the thorny psychology, volatile emotions, and the dubious morality that hangs over the film like a ominous cloud. It still has the big (and small) genre moments you expect. But once his pieces are in place the film slows down and lets the characters open up and take over. The fast setup and little buildup is a bit jarring, but you certainly can’t accuse Adler of dragging his feet. How’s that for a revelation? And all of that happens in the first 15 minutes or so. There she reveals to her stunned husband Lewis (Chris Messina) that she has abducted one of the Nazi soldiers who raped her and murdered her sister during the final days of World War II. With his back turned she clubs him with a hammer, throws him in the trunk, and drives home. As the man walks home from work he stops to help Maja who fakes car trouble. Maja sneaks across their yard, peers through a window and finally sees his face. Still unable to get a good look at him, she follows the man to his house where he is greeted by his wife and two young children. A day or so later Maja sees the man again (he’s played by Joel Kinneman), this time at a hardware store.
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