Review - The secret in their eyes: "A GENUINE CAMPANELLA, EVEN MORE DARK AND VIRTUOUS (by halbert)

It will be difficult to overcome this latest film by Juan Jose Campanella when deciding what was the year's national success. "The secret in their eyes" is a very high commitment of its director, who had already demonstrated their craft with award-winning "Son of the Bride" and the melancholy "Luna de Avellaneda". His professional strength, his ability as a storyteller and as a director of actors, his gift for dialogue and his handling of folk humor place him among contemporary directors who knows how to entertain with his films, in addition to thinking and, especially, to move.

This time, closer to his first feature film "Same Love, Same Rain" (more than anything for her duet players and tell a story that takes place over several years) Campanella dare to base a novel by Eduardo Sacheri, replacing the linearity of his earlier works for a complex and fragmented narrative, where the amazing camera work is one of its highest points. It's the end of the '90s. Benjamin Esposito (Ricardo Darin), a clerk magistrate of the City of Buenos Aires, is about to retire and decides to write a novel based on a police matter that moved him thirty years before, which was witnessed and played. His obsession with the brutal murder of a beautiful young woman, which occurred in 1975, leading to relive those years, bringing to mind the violence of the crime, and a deep history of impossible love with her co-worker, Irene (Soledad Villamil ), who wished in silence for years. Esposito writes the novel that makes us go the 70s, when they lived in Argentina violent times, the air was thin and nothing was what appeared to be.

We are in a film that mixes several genres, but it points especially to a black police, tinted romantic, folkloric, political, dramatic and even humorous. Therefore, for the latter, the inclusion of Guillermo Francella characterized without his classic mustache, it is essential, because as a close friend of the protagonist brings much to the hilarious moments, but also one very special, full of drama.

There are great moments throughout this film story, and one very special is the sequence in Huracán stadium, where a foot chase is captured by the camera with a dizzying unusual in our cinema.

The performances are remarkable: the great chemistry between Darin and Villamil is flawless, and both are superb. Francella and, surprisingly, Pablo Rago (as the widow of the murdered woman) shine in their roles. Two side with very little give a lot: Mario Alarcon and Jose Luis Gioia. All the formal aspect is excellent, mostly because the period reconstructions, including music, photography and art direction.
At the end, the tricky resolution gives a last surprise, and the most experienced viewers probably can not guess the outcome prepared by its director. Unfortunately, this surprise not be the last scene of the film, and an epilogue Campanella insists closer to the romantic conflict to police, the latter much more developed in the whole plot. Regardless, "The secret in their eyes" is positioned as a heavy police, an increase in the filmography of a riskier Campanella and clearly more virtuous in audiovisually storytelling.