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France · 2007
1h 45m
Director Claude Miller
Starring Patrick Bruel, Cécile de France, Ludivine Sagnier, Julie Depardieu
Genre Drama
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François Grimbert, a physician, gradually peels the layers of his buried family history which resulted in his difficult upbringing. To keep the family's many secrets, Grimbert's athletic father labored to stamp out stereotypical Jewish characteristics he perceived in his son.
Deepened by its complex back-and-forth chronology, deft shifts in perspective, and a significantly counterintuitive color-coding of past and present, A Secret suggests that it's not illicit passion, but rather the crime of denial, that has screwed up this family down the generations.
The New York Times by A.O. Scott
Nearly every melodramatic impulse has been suppressed in favor of a calm precision that serves both to intensify and delay the emotional impact of the film’s climactic disclosures.
A clanking, old-fashioned period drama infused with almost unbearable grief, Claude Miller's film A Secret has an enormous significance in France that it can never possess elsewhere.
Claude Miller's ravishingly shot drama A Secret gives up its titular mystery early, so it may seem odd to speak of the suspense it generates.
A fine drama that stands as Gallic vet Claude Miller's best in at least a decade.
New York Daily News by Jami Bernard
Beautifully acted and exquisitely photographed, director Claude Miller's superb drama, from Philippe Grimbert's autobiographical novel, is awash with the ripples created by unlived lives.
A gripping mystery and an ever-timely reminder of the terrible power of repression and silence.
Los Angeles Times by Kevin Thomas
A harrowing and wrenching coming-of-age story.
A Secret is suitably tense, sad, and deeply poignant as it moves toward an epilogue exploring the idea that everything rots and decays, no mater how well-maintained.
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.
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