THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES (19th April 2012)
Argentina 2009 124 minutes Cert. 18
Recently retired criminal court investigator Benjamín (Ricardo Darín) decides to write a novel based on a twenty-five-year-old unresolved rape and murder case, which still haunts him. Sharing his plans with Irene (Soledad Villamil), the beautiful judge and former colleague he has secretly been in love with for years, Benjamín’s initial involvement with the case is shown through flashbacks, as he sets out to identify the murderer. But Benjamín’s search for the truth will put him at the centre of a judicial nightmare, as the mystery of the heinous crime continues to unfold in the present, testing the limits of a man seeking justice and personal fulfilment at last.
Thus commences an absorbing back and forth journey through time, between Buenos Aires in 1974 and 2000, which reopens both the crime and the unacknowledged feeling that has remained all these years between Irene and Benjamin.
Benjamín Esposito – Ricardo Darín
Irene Menéndez Hastings – Soledad Villamil Campanella
Pablo Sandoval – Guillermo Francella
Ricardo Morales – Pablo Rago
Isidoro Gómez – Javier Godino
Liliana Coloto – Carla Quevedo
Director – Juan José Campanella
Screenplay – Eduardo Sacheri, Juan José based on novel by Eduardo Sacheri
Cinematography – Félix Monti
Original Music – Federico Jusid, Emilio Kauderer
Producers – Mariela Besuievski, Juan José Campanella, Carolina Urbieta
“Juan Jose Campanella is the writer-director, and here is a man who creates a complete, engrossing, lovingly crafted film. He is filled with his stories. The Secret in Their Eyes is a rebuke to formula screenplays. We grow to know the characters, and the story pays due respect to their complexities and needs. There is always the sense that they exist in the now and not at some point along a predetermined continuum.” Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
“Don’t be put off. This spellbinder from Argentina will sneak up and floor you. It’s that good.” Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
“A supremely watchable, well-made and well-acted movie with a dark, sinewy sense of history: a tremendously slick thriller from a director who has worked on American TV shows such as Law and Order and House.” Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian