The Secret In Their Eyes Review

Juan Jose Campanella’s twisty thriller sees retired criminal investigator Benjamin Esposito (Richard Darin) looking back at his time as a deputy clerk in 1970s Buenos Aires, as he pours the memories of an investigation he cannot forget into a novel.

2010 was a good year for foreign movies. We had Haneke’s The White Ribbon and Audiard’s A Prophet but both were beaten to the Academy Award by the then little known Argentinean film, The Secret in Their Eyes.

Back in the 70s, Benjamin was reluctantly assigned to investigate the brutal rape and murder of a young woman. He only truly embraces the case after meeting the woman’s grieving husband, Ricardo Morales (Pablo Rago), and seeing the love in Morales’ eyes for his lost love, Esposito and his often inebriated partner Pablo Sandoval (Guillemo Francella) throw themselves into trying to catch the killer.

The film deals with love as much as it does the crime, and Esposito’s impossible love for his boss, Irene (Soledad Villemil) provides other strand to films narrative, as he confronts her 25 years later to help him with the book. Both have clearly been affected by the repercussions of the case. She is done with the past, he cannot forget it.

“If you keep going over the past, you’re going to end up with no future” one of the characters tells Esposito; for him it seems the complete opposite. As long as the past case haunts him, he cannot think about his future.

The film, despite the dramatic themes and the heavy material of the case, has many comic moments, coming in the form of the banter between Benjamin and Pablo, a relationship that slowly and somewhat surprisingly becomes emotionally affecting.

The acting throughout is sublime, with Darin coming across as determined with the case but wounded in his interactions with Villemil and all the supporting roles are played to perfection. The interactions set 25 years latter are aided by make up that age them realistically and Darin performs Benjamin at the latter stages of his life with all the depth of a man that has dwelled on the memories of the past for too long.

The Secret in Their Eyes also contains, for me, the sequence of 2010. A long take that sees the camera twisting and turning over a football pitch, then through the crowd and finally around the mazy corridors of the stadium seems impossible but absolutely real, with no hint of CGI or camera trickery.

Campanella flits back and forth between time zones effortlessly and the twisty nature of the thriller, the humane treatment of the love angle as well as its unexpected ending makes The Secret in Their Eyes, one of the most perfectly paced and absorbing thrillers to come around in a long, long time.