Things Ian watches: TELL NO ONE

2006, dir. François Cluzet

This is the second French film I’ve watched in a short while, which is bit weird. But French films are super cool! The men dress great, the woman are all beautiful, and the main character often drives a Volvo. TELL NO ONE delivers on all three counts.
TELL NO ONE combines two of my favourite genres:

• European mystery with lots of lesbians, sex, and gruesome murder (a la The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo).
• Hitchcockian thriller where a regular dude gets accused of a crime he didn’t commit and is chased by cops and bad guys while simultaneously uncovering THE TRUTH.

The film has as great hook: Eight years after his wife’s murder, a man gets an email from… his “dead” wife. DUN DUN DUN. A twisty-turny tale of conspiracy and deception follows. TELL NO ONE doesn’t bring anything new to the genre but its still a good watch. It won’t knock your socks off but fans of mysteries and thrillers will enjoy it.

However, there is a lengthy chase sequence midway through the film that indeed knocked my socks off. It was so good I fear the director will be hired by some big studio and start making terrible Hollywood films. Unfortunately, Tell no One falls into the trap that many films of this type do: at the end of the film, a character sits down and explains the entire plot to the protagonist in a boring 15-minute monologue, with the requisite flashbacks that explain everything. Screenwriters: stop doing this.

A couple days after I saw this movie it was announced that Ben Affleck in talks to remake it. I don’t really have a strong opinion on this. It certainly doesn’t need to be remade, but Affleck is a fairly solid, albeit unspectacular, director. If he sets it in Boston, I'm in. Love those Boston movies!