40
A tolerably silly lark, decorated with lots of tasteful (and exclusively female) nudity. Yet as Christophe's role expands -- and the soundtrack's classical flourishes become more strident -- the film's plausibility plummets.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
75
Christian Science Monitor by David Sterritt
The sensationalistic beginning and needless mumbo-jumbo ending aside, this is a female buddy film with bite.
30
Washington Post by Desson Thomson
Gets more operatically farcical (most of it unintentionally so) by the minute.
50
Neil LaBute on his worst day couldn't devise a scenario so primitive in its psychology and predictable in its sense of sin.
80
Los Angeles Times by Kevin Thomas
The result is both merciless and darkly funny.
80
There's plenty for both the eyes and intellect to groove over in Secret Things, a taut, juicy, low-key feast of sexual and office politics filtered through helmer Jean-Claude Brisseau's customary blend of expedient formality and all-stops-out baroque behavior.
60
TV Guide Magazine by Maitland McDonagh
It would be hard to mount a straight-faced defense of Brisseau's feverish moral tale, complete with a lurking angel of death, but the carnal machinations are hugely entertaining -- particularly if you like your skin with a bracing sermon chaser.
50
San Francisco Chronicle by Mick LaSalle
Skids into absurdity, but it never quite gets boring. Movies like this rarely are.
80
Though his work has been little seen outside of France, writer-director Jean-Claude Brisseau's reputation as one of the most terribles of his country's filmmaking enfants precedes him. This 2002 film offers ample evidence as to why.
70
Cobbled together from borrowed parts, Jean-Claude Brisseau's Secret Things makes a fearsome Frankenstein monster out of other movies, yet the influences are so thoroughly digested that they come out seeming wholly original.