Young love, golden excitement, blissful marriage. Happy ending? No, not quite. The next step is a brutal murder.
Michigan State University has recently hosted the Anna Norris French Film Festival titled “Amour” (“Love”), presented by Anne Violin-Wigent and Valentina Denzel. Along with Professor Sonia Badenas from the Language Department, two students, Anders Jeronimo (junior, biochemistry and French) and Rachel Cote (senior, visual arts education), as well as myself, attended the opening night. Dr. Badenas explained, “In a time and day where people watch shows on their own on personal devices, I thought it was a great idea to bring together people that like French to watch movies together.” Anders similarly expressed his enjoyment of the event, saying, “I think there is something about when the lights go dim, and we are all just in silence, no matter how big or how small the audience, and we are just waiting to be led by the filmmaker.” The film festival kicked off with the thriller “Ne le dis à personne,” the movie adaptation of the novel “Tell No One” (2001) by the American author Harlan Coben. In 2006, the story was taken over by the French movie director Guillaume Canet, who created a picturesque movie that won twelve awards and was nominated for fifteen.
Guillaume Canet pulls us into the convoluted life of Alexandre (François Cluzet) as he receives cryptic messages from his late wife, Margot (Marie-Josée Croze), who was murdered eight years prior. With new details and clues springing up, Alexandre finds himself drawn back into the past, looking for ghosts and lost love, trying to make sense of what really happened that fateful night at the lake. The audience is left blind, knowing only what Alexandre himself knows, making us at times doubt his own doubts.
This French film, as Canet so artistically portrayed, is a love story before it is a thriller. In fact, Harlan Coben, the author, was quite impressed with Canet's passion for the story and his unique vision, admiring the fact that he saw that the novel was a love story first and a thriller second, which Hollywood never really understood. Canet masterfully communicated this in this film’s cinematography through the use of music, dialogue, and visuals. Dr. Badenas conveyed, “I liked the fact that the movie was unpredictable. Until the end, you did not know how it would end. Films based on good books make great movies.” The music choices were extraordinary, including songs like “With Or Without You” by U2, “Lilac Wine” by Jeff Buckley, “For Your Precious Love” by Otis Redding, and “Ne le dis a personne” by Matthieu Chedid. They enveloped the movie wonderfully, putting into words and melodies the important and, at times, unspoken themes of the film.
At times, the absence of any dialogue made perfect sense; so much emotion was communicated through music, visual symbolism, and the actors’ expressiveness. There was no excessive dialogue, just enough to communicate needed information to the audience, making the viewers feel like they were personally implicated in the plot, simultaneously discovering plot twist after plot twist with the characters. The visuals were equally spectacular, making use of different filters for different timelines and characters and using camera angles in a beautiful way that accentuated movement and emotion. Rachel commented, “I appreciate the visuals and how straight to the point it was. Thrillers are always fun to watch.” Anders added, “The movie makes great use of color and camera movement. There is a lot of intentionality and symbolism in there.”
As someone in the audience expressed at the end of the viewing, this isn’t a movie you can only watch once. Dr. Violin-Wigent, heartily affirmed that she had watched it six times now, and the plot was finally clearing up in her mind. The twists and turns seem so raw and direct, everything clearing up at the end, but at the same time, nothing is clear anymore as the film comes to a close. “Ne le dis à personne” really makes you want to sit alone with your thoughts in an empty theater while the credits roll, pondering on human connection and to what ends you would really go for love.
The Student Movement is the official student newspaper of Andrews University. Opinions expressed in the Student Movement are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors, Andrews University or the Seventh-day Adventist church.