FiLmReviEw
IN SECRET [2013, US - English]
Elizabeth Olsen is a promising actor, admired her performance in Martha Marcy May Marlene in 2011 (which she was nominated and won numerous awards including Most Promising Performer at Chicago Film Critics Association), and she even managed to look convincing through her small role in Gareth Edward’s version of Godzilla in 2014. In Charlie Stratton’s erotic thriller In Secret, Olsen is joined by credible cast Jessica Lange, Oscar Isaac and Tom Felton. It tells the story of a young woman, Thérèse (Olsen) who lives in rural France with her overbearing aunt (Lange) and is forced into a dissatisfying marriage to her sickly cousin Camille (Felton). Suffering in her oppressive marriage, Thérèse soon embarks on a reckless and doomed affair with Camille’s childhood friend, the suave Laurent (Isaac) who can give her everything Camille can’t.
Though it has been done many a time, such a plot is always intriguing to me. The culminating pace of two secret lovers from their first forbidden moments of attraction and desire, right up to an insidious ploy of murder at the end. The main characters are convincing and draw strong chemistry. Olsen’s portrayal is profuse in her yearning for sexual release. Then comes Isaac as the convincing free-spirited artist crackling with sexual electricity, perfect answer to her suffocating marriage. Lange is at her best, as usual. Her character shows us the extreme emotions she goes through, and so much can be felt even with just her darting eyes as she lies there after a stroke-induced paralysis towards the second half of the film.
My issue with the film is the pace. It was definitely rushed. Perhaps potentially a better fit for a mini-series, audience should get to feel Thérèse’s sense of being trapped, to truly appreciate the desperation and push for her character to go into the heated and scandalous affair. That was clearly lacking to me. The story was soon hastened into her little secret rendezvous with Laurent, and I wished a little more time could’ve been spent there as well on teasing the audience with the danger and suspense the two characters had to go through in their clandestine meetings. It is after all an erotic thriller. It is an adequate effort, but is it scandalous, is it really provocative, not enough for me.
Director Charlie Stratton has been said to have failed in delivering the dark passion of its original story in the classic 1867 novel Thérèse Raquin. Critics will be rather harsh, considering that this is a highly acclaimed piece of work from Émile Zola who was nominated for Nobel Prize in Literature.
Rating : C+
Watch the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L58WBZDHP1s
